


From Fox River to Central City

by rurousha



Series: Multiverse [1]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), Prison Break, The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Earths, Angst, Crossover, Drama, F/M, Gen, Humor, Lots of Doppelgangers, M/M, doppelgangers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-01-25 04:13:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 38,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21350053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rurousha/pseuds/rurousha
Summary: Michael Scofield had already failed to rescue his brother once, and his second attempt was going to be even more complicated.  Then he saw a flash of yellow lightning, and his world changed completely.Takes place during season 1 of Prison Break and near the end of season 4 of Flash.Many romantic relationships mentioned.Rated for violence, some language and sexual implications, and brief self harm and mentions of suicide.
Relationships: Barry Allen/Leonard Snart, Leonard Snart/Ray Terrill, Leonard Snart/Sara Tancredi, Lincoln Burrows & Michael Scofield, Mick Rory & Leonard Snart, Sara Lance/Leonard Snart
Series: Multiverse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1539124
Comments: 71
Kudos: 117





	1. Prologue

**Earth-11  
** Ferris Airfield  
2015

The world had gotten much stranger since the particle accelerator explosion. Metahumans and superpowers and vigilantes, oh my! But Leonard adapted. He always did. People were still really the same. Rescue some criminals from life in prison, and they would owe him a lot more than just a favor. Let a kind-hearted fool think he was reaching him, and Leonard would have the chance to take advantage. The fact that the kind-hearted fool in question was the Flash was just a bonus.

Leonard didn’t really want the Flash dead. Never mind how fun the kid was. Leonard suspected the world was going to keep getting stranger, and he would rather have the Flash out on the streets. But he definitely needed to be taught a lesson about trusting people.

So Leonard let Mardon zap the kid, left him sprawled out on the asphalt of Ferris Air.

“Finish him, Simmons,” Mardon shouted.

Well, that wouldn’t do at all. Leonard raised his cold gun to take out Simmons.

Suddenly, Snow barreled into him, screaming, “You did this! You did this!”

His shot went wide as she knocked him down, clawing at his face. Then Simmons took his shot. The scream as Simmons’ energy beams tore through the Flash drowned out everything else.

No. No, that wasn’t supposed to happen. 

Leonard struck Snow across the head with his gun, stunning her. Detective West fired on Simmons, taking him down. Mardon and Bivolo ran.

This wasn’t the plan.

Leonard ran to the Flash and knelt down. He was still breathing and even conscious, but the dark lines through his chest were long and deep. “Flash, Flash, it’s okay. I can fix this, don’t worry.” He was babbling. He didn’t do that. He was panicking. He never did that.

“You sabotaged the truck,” Flash gasped. It didn’t sound good.

Leonard cradled the Flash’s head in his hands. “Don’t worry about that. Just hold still. I’m going to call an ambulance.”

“You gave me your word…” he whispered. Then he went limp.

“Flash? Barry? Barry!” Leonard shoved the cowl off his face, but it didn’t change anything. Barry Allen was dead in his hands.

“Barry!” West ran towards them and aimed at Leonard, but Leonard shot him down with his cold gun before he made it two feet.

“You did this,” Snow muttered, dazedly, a few feet away. Leonard shot her too.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Simmons was already dead, but Mardon and Bivolo hadn’t gotten far. Leonard ran after them. Both were dead within minutes. He came back to find Ramon huddled over Barry’s body.

Lisa grabbed at his jacket. “Lenny, we need to go. We need to get out of here, before the cops show up.”

“Go,” he whispered.

“Snap out of it, Len! We need to go!”

He shoved her off of him hard enough that she backpedaled into his bike, almost knocking it over. She looked scared. He had never been violent toward her before, ever. “Get out of here,” he said.

She set her jaw. “I’m going to go get Mick. We’re going to get out of this.” She got on the bike and fled.

There was no getting out of this.

Ramon was sobbing over his friend’s body. “I told him not to trust you,” Ramon muttered. “I told him you were just a killer.”

He was a criminal and a liar, and he hurt people. He clutched the cold gun in his right hand. “I’m just a killer.”

A few hours later, the particle accelerator exploded again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is already outlined and about half written. Unfortunately, it's the first half that's giving me problems. It's mostly from Michael's POV, and his voice is hard to get right. Chapter 1 should be up soon.


	2. Fox River

**Earth-29  
** Fox River State Penitentiary  
2005, during season 1, episode 16 

The day after Lincoln’s near execution, Michael was let off from PI. It was just as well. With one failed escape attempt already, the rest of the group was less than thrilled with him. Michael needed time alone to think.

He did, however, get time in the yard. Everyone, even Sucre, was giving him some space today. He sat on one of the bleachers and scanned the yard until his eyes landed on the storm drain in the middle of the lawn. He knew that was another way into the infirmary, but he didn’t look forward to telling the group. 

There was a flash of yellow. Michael stood and looked at the other end of the yard, near the guards’ entrance. There it was again. A flash of yellow that flickered in and out, almost like lightning moving sideways. It didn’t look like anyone else noticed it.

“Hey Michael.” Sucre, ever the brave one, walked up to him. Michael pushed the strange lighting out of his mind and turned to his cellmate. It was snowing, and Sucre had his hands shoved in his jacket. “Any idea what we’re doing now?”

“Yeah, some ideas. I’ll need to work some things out first.”

~  
It was at dinnertime that Michael learned they would be spreading salt around the yard to melt the ice the next day. That was good. It would let him get the lay of the land around the grate he would need to use to get to the psych ward.

“Is this supposed to be you, Fish?” Michael looked up from his seat to see C-Note approaching him. He handed him a photo.

Michael took the photo and was surprised to see that it was him and Lincoln in it. But it was also definitely not them. The men in the photo were too old, for one, by at least ten years. Michael looked haughty and was smirking at the camera. Lincoln looked bored, sitting beside him and fiddling with something out of frame. 

“I’ve never seen this before. Where did you get it?”

“Found it near the north gate. Some other stuff too.”

“The guards’ entrance.”

“Right.”

The yellow lightning.

The timer buzzed, alerting them that dinner was over.

~  
Michael awoke to several people shouting. This wasn’t too unusual, even in the middle of the night, but Michael’s nerves were on edge these days. He kept waking up at the slightest disruption.

“What’s going on, Papi?” Sucre mumbled from his top bunk.

“I don’t know,” Michael groaned as he rolled out of bed. He walked over to the door and scanned the dark tiers just as a guard yelled, “Quiet cons!”

The block quieted back down, and Michael was ready to go back to bed when a red blur suddenly appeared in front of him.

Michael jolted back in surprise, and Sucre sat up in bed, groggily saying, “Wha’s tha?”

It was a man. He was dressed head to toe in red, and the top half of his face was covered in a cowl. “Snart, shh shh shh,” the man whispered, putting a finger to his lips. “Look, Snart, I don’t know if you know who I am, but you’re in danger. I gotta get you and Mick out of here.”

“Snart?” Michael asked.

“Who is that supposed to be, Papi?”

“Look, just don’t freak out, okay?” Without further warning, the man in red blurred. There was a sound like static, and he stepped though the bars as if they were intangible. Or he was.

Michael startled back into the desk, and Sucre yelled, “Es el diablo. El diablo esta aqui!”

The man snapped back into focus. “No, shhhhh. It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here to save you.”

Sucre was panicking up on his bunk. Michael was stunned into inaction. The man in red had the patience for neither. He just grabbed Michael around the shoulders and vibrated them both. It felt like fire or lightning lancing through his whole body, but it didn’t hurt. It was terrifying. It was extraordinary. 

The man in red pulled Michael through the back wall. For just a second, Michael saw the inside of the concrete bricks that made up that wall, then piping, electronics, empty rooms, and then they stopped.

“Was that a hole I saw behind your toilet? Why am I not surprised you’re doing a prison break?”

Michael pushed himself away from the stranger and shakily stood on his own feet. “Alright, what is going on? How did you do that?”

“You don’t know me, then? That’s fine,” the man said. He was young-looking, probably a little younger than Michael himself. His outfit looked like faux-leather and had lightning emblems on the chest and over the ears. It looked like a live-action reimagining of a comic book superhero costume. 

“Don’t worry,” the stranger continued. “I will explain everything. But you’re in danger, and we’ve only got a few minutes before your cellmate’s shouting alerts the COs that you’re gone. I can explain now, here, or you can tell me where Mick is, and I’ll explain later, not here.”

Michael gave himself three seconds to calm his breathing and focus his attention. “Later, not here.”

“Good. Where’s Mick? I didn’t see him in the yard.”

Michael pulled the photo C-Note had given him out of his pocket. “When you say Mick, do you mean this man?” He tapped his finger on not-Lincoln.

The man nodded. “Yeah, him. Do you know him?”

“This is my brother, and his name’s Lincoln Burrows. I’m Michael Scofield.”

“Oh, that’s new.”

“He’s in Ad Seg.”

“For setting someone on fire?” the man asked, nodding in understanding.

“What? No. Why would that be your first guess?”

“Never mind. Just point me in the direction of the SHU, and I’ll find him eventually.”

“I can lead you there.”

“Of course you can.”

Michael had realized that they had stopped in a room he was quite familiar with. He dragged the metal shelving out of the way and revealed the hole into the old iron pipes behind it. “This way.” Michael led the man, who seemed very amused with this, into the tunnels. 

Once in the old sewer pipes, the man in red seemed quite happy to chat. “I’m the Flash, by the way. It seemed like you didn’t know that.”

Michael turned left. “You’re a…” he couldn’t believe he was about to say this, “superhero.”

“That’s right. Do you not have them here?”

“We do not. They are fictional. Or they were.” He thought they were.

“Don’t worry. You haven’t completely misunderstood the nature of the world, or anything. I’m just from a different universe.”

“Of course you are.”

“My name’s Barry Allen.”

Michael stopped and turned to look at the young man. Barry Allen. The Flash. “I thought you’re not supposed to tell people that.”

Barry grinned. “I’m terrible at rules.”

Then a loud siren wailed above them.

“I think they realized I’m missing. We need to get going.”

Michael led them through a few more turns, and then Barry phased – it was called phasing – them up on the ground floor. Michael gave him directions, and Barry ran them to the correct hallway faster than Michael could blink. That was very disorienting, and Michael had to order his stomach to stay put. 

They weren’t the only ones in the Ad Seg block. A CO stumbled back in surprise but quickly reached for his gun. Barry didn’t give him a chance to even aim it. With a red blur and a trail of yellow lightning, Barry and the CO were gone. Barry was back in an instant.

“I locked him in a closet.”

“Do you run so fast that you generate electricity around you? And that’s why they call you the Flash?”

“Yep.”

“Alright then.”

“Michael?” Lincoln’s voice carried from one of the cells. “Is that you? What’s going on?”

Michael ran over to Lincoln’s door and crouched down by the food slot. He saw Lincoln doing the same on the other side of the door, and relief washed over him. He flipped the light on for Lincoln’s cell.

“Lincoln, we’re getting out. Now.”

“What? How?”

“Just step back, okay?”

With that, Barry grabbed Michael by the shoulders again and phased them through the door. 

“What the hell?! Michael, what the hell?!” In a burst of fraternal protectiveness, Lincoln pulled Michael away from Barry and partial shielded him from the costumed superhero. “What’s going on?”

“Hi. Flash. Superhero. Rescuing you now. And one,” Barry stepped forward and wrapped his right arm around Michael’s shoulders, “two,” he wrapped his left arm around Lincoln’s waist, “and three.” He took a dramatic step forward, and the three of them were suddenly somewhere else.

It only took a couple seconds. There was a blur, and Michael felt like he got the wind knocked out of him. He took several steadying breathes. Then he realized that Lincoln was gagging, trying to avoid throwing up. Barry stepped back and waited for them to collect themselves. 

“Ow,” Barry said. “It is not easy to run while carrying two people. And Mick – err, Lincoln – you are a big guy.”

Once Michael caught his balance, he took stock of where they were. It was a lightly wooded area, and he could see a highway nearby. He wasn’t sure which highway. It was dark and very cold.

“Alright,” Michael said. “We need to move quickly to get ahead of the roadblocks they will have up soon.”

“Michael.”

“Barry, are you able to get us at least ten miles away? I don’t know how far you can run with both of us.”

“Michael.”

“We will also need to change our scent to avoid dogs – .” 

“Michael!” Barry grabbed Michael by the shoulders to keep him from spiraling further. “You’re okay, Michael. You’re 50 miles away, a little outside Ottawa.”

“… What?” Michael asked stupidly.

“What?” Lincoln asked, confused.

“We’re already two counties west.”

Michael decided that he needed to sit. There was a convenient rock nearby. He sat. “Barry, here, now.”

“Alright. My name is Barry Allen. I am the fastest man alive, the Flash, a superhero from a different universe we call Earth-1. This is Earth-29.”

“Are you seriously talking about multiverse theory right now?” Lincoln growled. “Like something out of Star Trek?”

“Exactly. And on each Earth there are other versions of you, which we call doppelgangers. Your doppelgangers on my Earth are named Leonard Snart and Mick Rory. They are – well, were – supervillains called Captain Cold and Heatwave.”

Lincoln rubbed a hand over his face and muttered, “This is completely ridiculous.”

Michael pulled the photo out again, but it was too dark to see it well. “I don’t suppose you have a flashlight in there somewhere?”

To his surprise, Barry retrieved a backpack out of a tree and gave Michael a flashlight out of it. Michael used it to show Lincoln the photo with the two of them that were not the two of them.

“My friend should rendezvous with us soon to take us to Earth-1. The two of you are in danger. You’re being hunted.”

“Yeah,” Lincoln said. “By the people that landed me on death row for a crime I didn’t commit and now every law enforcement agency in the country.”

“Okay, I didn’t know about that first one. But I meant that we believe you’re going to be attacked by alternate version of yourselves named Killer Cold and Heatwave.”

“Why?” Michael asked.

“They’ve already killed several other doppelgangers from different Earths.”

“I meant why would they do that?” Michael asked.

“We don’t know.”

“Where are they from?”

“We don’t know that yet either. Cisco’s looking into it.”

Lincoln snapped, “Then what do you know?”

“That Killer Cold’s got super powers that you are not able to defend against. So I’m going to take you to my Earth for protection until we can get him.”

“And how are we doing that?”

Right on cue, a swirling mess of wind and color opened up behind Barry. 

“That couldn’t have been timed better,” Barry said, smiling.

A man jumped out of the vortex.

“Flash, please tell me you have them.” The man had long, dark hair and wore some sort of tech-based sunglasses that glowed slightly blue.

Barry did a flourish towards Michael and Lincoln. “Doppelgangers from Earth-29 retrieved.”

“Thank god. I have made 14 interdimensional trips today. 14 is too many. Too many, I say.”

“Guys, this is Cisco Ramon, aka Vibe. He can open a breach to other worlds. Which is what that is.” Barry indicated the glowing, swirling vortex in the middle of the woods. “Cisco, these are Michael Scofield and Lincoln Burrows.”

“Great. More names to keep track of. Doesn’t matter, we’ll get details back home. Everyone, into the breach.”

Simultaneously, Michael and Lincoln said, “No.”


	3. Illinois

**Earth-29**  
**Illinois **  
**2005**

“What?” Cisco asked, stunned.

“No,” the brothers said again.

“What do you mean, no? Barry, you did say, ‘Come with me if you want to live’, right?”

“Not in so many words.”

“Dangit, Barry, you had one job!”

Barry pushed the cowl off of his head. Michael took in all the details of his face – his brown hair and concerned eyes, his worried mouth. Even in the dark, he was very easy to read.

Barry stepped over to Michael and gently grabbed him by the forearms.

“Michael, I know we’ve thrown a lot at you. It was only a few minutes ago that you were locked up in prison and superheroes and alternate realities didn’t exist. But you are in danger. We will protect you, I promise.”

“I believe you, Barry. I do. That’s not the problem.”

“It’s a little the problem,” Lincoln said.

“But we have family. Those people that Lincoln mentioned? The ones that framed him? They’ll come after them.”

“They killed my ex-wife,” Lincoln shouted. “They threatened my son! I’m not leaving without Veronica and LJ.”

“A son?” Barry repeated, surprised. He let go of Michael, and the chill in the air hit him full force.

Cisco groaned and pulled his glasses off. “Dude, I gotta close this breach. I’m spent, man, and I’ve already got to pick up Caitlin and Joe on Earth-4 in six hours. What are we doing?”

“OK, where’s your family?” Barry asked.

“Washington DC,” Michael told him.

“OK.” Barry pressed the lightning emblem over his right ear and said, “Iris? Yeah, we got them, but it looks like this rescue mission has a second part. Can you spare Cisco to come with me?”

There was a soft click, and Cisco touched what must be a wireless earpiece in his ear too. “Yeah, I’ll stay here for a bit. Don’t worry, I won’t miss the pick-up. ‘Kay. See ya.”

“Bye Iris. Love you too.” Barry dropped his hand from his ear.

With a wave of Cisco’s hand, the breach to another world closed.

“So… where in DC are they?”

~

Michael and Lincoln didn’t actually know where exactly Veronica and LJ were, so Barry couldn’t simply run there and pick them up. He also wasn’t too keen on carrying everyone across the country. Cisco could apparently open breaches from one point to another within the same universe, but he was exhausted and wasn’t sure about opening a breach that far regardless. Eventually, they decided to find a car and just drive there. Privately, Michael was grateful for the mundane transportation. He needed something to feel normal for just a few minutes.

Barry had a change of clothes in his backpack and changed into them in a flash of lightning. Then the group found a nearby car park. Nearby, in this case, meant about five miles away. Barry did make covering ground a lot easier.

The four of them searched through the cars for one that was unlocked or didn’t have an alarm system.

“Found one!” Lincoln shouted across the lot. It was the middle of the night, and no one else was around. He popped the door open. “Just give me a second to get it started. It’s been a while since I had to hotwire a car.”

“I can do it.” Barry excitedly ran into the open driver’s door before Lincoln had even fully opened it. Just as Michael arrived, Barry snapped his right hand, creating an electrical current between his thumb and index finger, and sent the mini lightning through the ignition. The car blazed to life.

“Yea-hah,” Barry cheered. “I’d always wondered if that would work.”

“Sure,” Lincoln griped, “Comic book magic. Why not?”

Cisco leaned in through the passenger door, which he had opened. “You know, you could have blown out the battery.”

“Shh, no one needs to know that.”

Michael and Lincoln got into the back seats while Cisco took shotgun. 

Rather belatedly, Barry said, “You know, I don’t like that we’re stealing a car.”

“We’ve already broken two felons out of prison. We’re committed. Just drive.”

Barry hesitated.

“Barry, get us out of here,” Cisco prodded.

“Sure.” He shifted the gears, and the car started forward. Very slowly.

“Oh my gosh, dude. Do you even know how to drive?”

“I know how to drive! It’s just been a while.”

“Do you have a license?”

“I do. It just expired when I was in a coma, and I never bothered to renew it. Seemed kind of pointless… Also, I’ve never driven stick.”

“Okay, I’m gonna drive now.”

Barry and Cisco switched places. 

“So… which direction’s DC in?”

That brought Lincoln to the end of his patience. “I’m driving.” He roughly pulled Cisco out of the driver’s seat and got in. Michael switched with Barry, who went without asking why he had to give up shotgun.

“How did we both end up in the backseat?” Cisco asked. No one answered.

~

“Maps. Maps app, why aren’t you working? Why don’t I have a signal?”

“It’s 2005 here, Cisco,” Barry said.

Cisco gave a dramatic gasp. “I regret joining in this rescue mission. It’s the technological dark ages here.”

“We were both alive in 2005, dude.”

“And I am forever ashamed of that.”

Michael looked over his shoulder at the pair in the back seat while Lincoln pulled them onto the highway. They were looking at a device in Cisco’s hand.

“Is that a combination of a phone and a laptop?”

Barry nodded. “A smartphone, yeah. If you follow the same technological development as us, then you should have them in a few years.”

Michael gave a small smile. Barry was right. There was a lot to process, but so far, it was extraordinary. 

“We’re still using flip phones.”

Cisco gave a short laugh. “Hah! That’s adorable, and I’m so embarrassed for you right now.”

~

If they stuck to major highways, drove the speed limit, and rotated drivers, it would take them a little over 11 hours to drive to Washington DC. Odds were that the highway patrol were already on the lookout for them, but Barry said he could flash them around any checkpoints that they came across. So Michael did his best to relax as Lincoln drove.

Barry told them about his world while Cisco dozed beside him. Vigilantes and superheroes in cities with names Michael had never heard before. A particle accelerator explosion in Central City in 2014. Time travel in 2015. Alternate realities and aliens in 2016. Nazis in 2017. Now, an evil super genius in 2018. Barry Allen had been very busy since he got his powers. Oddly, it made Michael feel a little better. If Barry could handle all of that, then Michael assured himself that he could handle this.

“So tell me about your world,” Barry said. “What about these guys that framed your brother?”

Michael and Lincoln told him what they knew. Spelled out as best they could, they realized that they knew frustratingly little. It was only speculation that everything led back to the Vice President, and Veronica hadn’t gotten back to them about the exhumation to prove that Terrance Steadman was still alive.

“That is some crazy Burn Notice-level stuff, there, not-Snart,” Cisco said. His eyes were closed, but he had apparently been listening the whole time.

Barry was eating Chinese takeout. Michael didn’t know where or even when he had gotten it. “Hey, the whole getting arrested to save your brother thing is kind of sweet. But the fact that this makes you a bank robber is not lost on me.”

It turned out that Leonard Snart and Mick Rory were career criminals – an arsonist and a thief. Then they were supervillains, then superheroes. Michael just had to come to the conclusion that Earth-1 was very complicated.

“So you’re not really a murderer, and you’re not really a bank robber,” Cisco summed up. 

Michael nodded once. Barry ate a gyro. Cisco scrunched his face up in suspicion. 

“Let’s see about that,” Cisco said just before he put his hand on Lincoln’s shoulder.

_Holding hands with Veronica._

_Eating blueberry pancakes with LJ._

_His hands shaking on the gun as he realized the man in the car was already dead._

_Police storming his bathroom with bloody pants in the tub._

_A cold, wood chair, chains around his wrists, water down his face, panic setting in, and his father’s face in the back of the room._

“Lincoln!”

Reality reasserted itself when Michael grabbed the steering wheel and turned them out of oncoming traffic.

“Sorry, sorry! That was dumb while you were driving!”

Lincoln slammed on the brakes and managed to pull over on the side of the highway. He bailed out of the car and scrambled to the grass beside the road.

“Lincoln?” Michael got out too and went over to his brother. Lincoln was leaning over, hands on thighs, panting heavily.

“That’s what this is, right? My life flashing before my eyes? My brain’s breaking down and coming up with this ridiculous superhero gimmick while I… while I’m…”

“Lincoln, no, Lincoln.” Michael moved in front of Lincoln and took one of his hands in both of his. “This is real. You are not in the chair, Lincoln, you are not dying.” Michael pressed both thumbs into Lincoln’s palm, cutting into the skin with his blunt fingernails as hard as he could.

“Ow. Ow, Michael!” This time, Lincoln sounded indignant instead of panicked.

“Focus, feel this, Lincoln. This is real. It is ridiculous, and it doesn’t make sense, but it is real. You are not dying, you are out, and we are going to go get LJ and Veronica, and then we are going to get through this comic book nightmare together.”

Lincoln laughed then, and it sounded only a little bit hysterical. “It is pretty comic book of them, right? Like, the outfits and the powers and everything?”

“It’s like they squeezed every sci fi and superhero cliché into one thing,” Michael agreed. He was smiling at Lincoln. “I’ll bet they have supervillains whose names either alliterate or are puns of their superpowers.”

Lincoln and Michael both laughed at that, and Michael felt the tension ease a little. They rejoined Barry and Cisco at the car.

“Sorry, man,” Cisco said again. Lincoln waved him off, and Michael got in the driver’s seat this time. He got them back on the road toward DC.

“So, what exactly did you do?” Michael asked of Cisco once he had reached cruising speed.

“I vibed him,” Cisco said. “I can touch people or their things and see, like, visions? Sometimes it’s a memory, or what they see, or even the future sometimes.”

“What did you see this time?” Barry asked.

“The night that guy was killed. It really wasn’t him, Barry. That guy was already dead by the time you got there, right Lincoln?”

Lincoln nodded. He looked relieved. Someone finally believed him.

Michael said, “Now if only you were admissible in court.”

~

Once back on the road, Barry gave Michael and Lincoln changes of clothes and shared some burritos with everyone.

“Did you steal these, Barry?”

“My card doesn’t work. I’m committed to a life of crime!”

“I blame Snart.”

“I do too.”

~

Nick Savrinn and Veronica Donovan bailed out of Nick’s office and onto the city sidewalks. Nick’s office phone hadn’t stopped ringing all morning, so they opted to take the paperwork home and leave the noise behind. They weren’t really supposed to be using the Project Justice offices anyway.

“Yes, Claira,” Nick shouted into his cell phone over the noise of the crowded street. “Just tell them no comment but forward me anything from the prison itself. Yes, I know. Thanks.”

He hung up, and Veronica struggled to get her papers to fit into her briefcase while trying to simultaneously flag down a cab.

“This is a real shit show, Veronica,” Nick said.

“I’m aware, Nick. But finding Terrence Steadman isn’t our priority anymore. Finding Michael and Lincoln is.”

“Well, if they have any brains at all, they’ll be halfway to Mexico already.”

A sharp, sudden gust of wind blew Veronica’s papers around, and she and Nick had to run to retrieve Steadman’s exhumation conclusions. They finally got a cab, and Veronica collapsed in the back seat with a heavy sigh.

“I knew Michael was up to something, but I didn’t do anything,” Veronica said. “I just hope they’re okay.”

The shrill ring of a cell phone cut through the cab. Neither moved to answer it. It rang again.

“You going to get that?” Nick asked.

“It’s not mine.”

The phone rang again. Confused, Veronica dug around in her bag and came up with a common flip phone. “This isn’t mine.” Still, she flipped the phone open and said, “Hello, who is this?”

_“Oh, V. It’s really good to hear your voice.”_

Veronica’s eyes widened in surprise, but she stifled the exclamation that wanted to escape. “How did you – God, are you alright?”

Nick looked at her in question, but she waved him off. 

_“We’re fine. But we need to talk to you. Are you somewhere private?”_

Instinctively, Veronica looked around. She trusted Nick to keep her secrets, but she didn’t know how much the cab driver could hear. “No. Just give me a few minutes. Don’t hang up, okay?”

_“I’ll stay right here, V.”_

For several agonizingly long minutes, Veronica kept Lincoln on the phone while the cab drove to Nick’s neighborhood. She didn’t say his name. She didn’t ask where he was. She didn’t ask how he had gotten out or how he got this phone to her. She just asked every few minutes if he was still there.

Finally, finally, they made their way out of the cab and up the stairs to Nick’s apartment. As soon as the door closed behind them, Veronica called, “LJ, come here. Lincoln, we’re here. Everyone’s here.” She put the phone on speakerphone.

_“Veronica, LJ, you both there?”_

“Dad? Dad, is that you? How’d you get out? The news is going crazy. Where are you?”

“We’re here, Lincoln. Nick Savrinn, too.”

“Lincoln, this is Nick. Look, we know Steadman is still alive, and we can prove it. We just need more time, but that’s not going to amount to anything if there is a manhunt out for you. You need to turn yourself in before you get shot.”

“Don’t listen to him, Dad. Exhuming Steadman didn’t turn anything up. Just run.”

_“LJ, everyone, listen. Proving me innocent isn’t going to work. The people after me are too good. But it doesn’t matter. There’s someone else after me and Michael and, well, we’ve got some help.”_

“Lincoln, what are you talking about?” Veronica asked. “Who’s helping you?”

_“Alright, you’re just going to have to trust me here. Every logical bone in your body is going to want to fight what you’re about to see. I know. I had a bit of an incident on the highway. So try to just shove that doubting part of you to the back of your mind and just go with what’s about to happen. It makes things a lot easier.”_

“What?” Nick asked.

_“The guy that planted this phone followed your cab.”_

“What?” Veronica asked.

There was a blur, and then a man stood in front of them. “Hi,” he said, smiling. “You should hold your breath.”

“What?” LJ asked.

In another blur, the man, Veronica, and LJ were gone. Nick Savrinn was left alone in his apartment.

“WHAT?”

~

In an alley ten blocks away, Barry stopped and released Veronica and LJ to Michael and Lincoln’s waiting arms. 

Exclamations of confusion and disbelief were repeated. 

“Who is this? What is happening?”

Explanations were given. 

“This is a superhero from a different reality.”

Warnings were shared.

“A murderous doppelganger?”

“That’s what we’ve been told, yes.”

Excitement was expressed.

“Are there sci fi guns?”

“Yes.”

“Can - ?”

“No.”

And Lincoln gave the best advice he could.

“Just nod and go along with it. Your stress levels with thank you.”

While Veronica and Lincoln argued over whether or not they would actually be going to another universe, Barry walked over to Michael and leaned on the brick wall next to him. “Don’t worry. Cisco’ll be here soon. He’ll vibe me and breach right here.”

“So we just have to not get arrested until he shows up,” Michael confirmed.

“Right.”

“Alright.” Michael nodded. Barry seemed completely unworried about the police. Michael supposed that they really weren’t any threat to the speedster. It was hard to not let Barry’s complacency make him feel lax himself. It wouldn’t pay to drop his guard while they were still in this reality.

He had mixed feelings about thinking that sentence.

Michael walked over to one entrance of the alley and scanned the area. There was traffic, of course, both on foot and by car, but not a lot. There was a public mailbox to his right and a fire hydrant across the street. There was a fire escape in the alley, and he and Lincoln had already pulled it down just in case they needed another get away.

It was bright out but chilly, and a heavy fog rolled in as Michael stood there. He shivered and rubbed his gloved hands together. He breathed into his hands to try to warm them up, but it didn’t help. He breathed in deeply to try again, but the air felt heavy, like ice in his lungs.

It really was cold. 

It was Cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was really hard to get out and kind of boring. The next one should be much more interesting.


	4. Washington DC

**Earth-29**  
**Washington DC**  
**2005**

He could barely breathe more than shallow gasps. The fog had gotten so thick that he could no longer see his family, and with a terrible crash, he realized that the fog was thickest around him.

“Michael? Michael, what happened?” Lincoln shouted. Michael couldn’t answer, the weight in his lungs was so great and so painful. He collapsed to one knee. Then Michael saw a flicker of yellow lightning and a roar of bright red flame.

“There you are!” a rough voice shouted. It almost, almost sounded like Lincoln.

Lincoln, LJ, Veronica, and Barry looked up to see Heatwave – wearing his fireman’s coat and goggles and wielding what Barry recognized as the heat gun – running down the fire escape. The flame had melted some of the metal framework, but the fire hadn’t reached the ground.

Barry said, “Guys, go, go.”

Before anyone got the chance to retreat out the other side of the alley – away from the fog enveloping Michael – another shot of fire stormed down. It caught the dumpster, which exploded. Veronica screamed, and LJ backpedaled into his father.

The fog retreated down to the ground at the heat of the flames. Michael tried to gasp in desperately, but his respite was brief. The fog swirled up his body and into his mouth and nose. His cheeks, his tongue, and his throat went numb.

Barry grabbed LJ and ran him past the flames and around the building. Then he did the same with Veronica. Just before he grabbed Lincoln, Lincoln held up his hand and shouted, “No. I can’t have him chasing them for me.”

“Ah,” Heatwave called. He jumped down the last bit of fire escape and landed heavily on his feet. “Noble. Stupid.” He looked over at Michael, who was bent double over the asphalt in his difficulty to breathe. “Jeez, kid. How old are you?”

“Back off, Mick,” Barry said. “We don’t have to fight here.”

“You’re right, Barry Allen.” The voice was familiar but still completely new. It was older, deeper than Michael’s, and it held such obvious contempt.

Killer Cold stood on the sidewalk, opposite the fire, past Michael. The fog radiated out from him, though it stayed close to the ground. He wore dark clothes and a blue parka, though the right sleeve had been shredded off. Instead of a bare arm, though, the flesh was embedded with metal and circuitry. There was a glowing blue circle in his forearm. He wore no goggles, and his eyes were blue. The right was lighter and brighter than could possibly be natural.

“For once, Barry,” he said, “we’re not here for you. I know you won’t, but leave with the woman and kid. Be their hero. The world won’t miss these two.”

Barry stood up straight and stepped in front of Lincoln. The fire was behind him and Heatwave, Michael, and Killer Cold in front. He had changed into his uniform during one of his runs, and Michael suddenly saw the hero that Central City must see every day.

“You’re right, Snart. I can’t leave. I won’t.”

“Yeah, I figured that would be your answer.”

Lightning enveloped Barry. At the same time, Michael realized what he felt under his hand, on the asphalt below the fog. Ice.

“Barry,” he rasped desperately, “don’t!”

It was too late. Barry bolted through the alley, shoving Heatwave against the wall as he passed. But as soon as he hit the alley entrance, he slipped on the ice and skidded into the street.

“Does that ever not work?” Killer Cold said to himself. The fog suddenly dissipated, showing that the alley, the sidewalk, and much of the street was covered in slick ice. The fog also disappeared from inside Michael’s lungs, and he gasped in harshly.

Barry tumbled to the far side of the road. He staggered to his feet but wasn’t in time to move before a heavy pickup truck swerved on the ice and hit Barry at 35 miles an hour.

“Barry!” Michael shouted hoarsely.

Barry was knocked back. The truck skidded onto dry asphalt, but the driver over-corrected as he tried to brake and regain control. The truck spun, nearly rolling over, to a stop, blocking traffic from one direction. One tire was shredded, it’s front was dented in, and the toolbox in the back had burst open.

Michael ran back into the alley before Killer Cold had a chance to come after him. Lincoln and Heatwave were tussling over the heat gun. It fired and set some rubbish on the ground on fire. Michael grabbed the only weapon he could find – a loose pipe – and, ignoring the fact that he looked just like his brother, swung it at Heatwave. He saw it coming and blocked with one arm, which sent the heat gun flying out of both their hands. Heatwave used the freedom to grab Lincoln and bodily threw him into Michael. The brothers hit the ground hard.

Heatwave ran after his gun, and Michael and Lincoln ran the other way, into the street with Killer Cold.

“Lincoln,” Michael said, “the truck. I have an idea.”

Killer Cold was shooting after Barry with a cold flame that erupted from his palm. It looked just like the blast from the cold gun. Barry was keeping ahead of the blast but hadn’t made it any closer to his opponent. Cold did a wide sweep with his hand. The cold blast lanced across the road and two cars that had quickly been abandoned. It created an ice wall, blocking traffic on the other side from the wrecked truck. Barry was quickly running out of dry ground on which to run.

Barry ran next to the truck where Michael and Lincoln were climbing into the back, to the tool box. He wondered, briefly, what they were doing and was relieved to see that the driver had made it out already. Then he ran in a circle, gathering lightning. He stopped suddenly and threw the lightning at Killer Cold. Just in time, Cold raised a shield of ice encasing his right arm. The shield shattered on impact and threw Cold backwards into the wall of ice behind him. It cracked but didn’t fall.

“Well,” Cold groaned. “That’s new.”

In the back of the truck, Michael threw open the tool chest and quickly found a wrench. Lincoln grabbed a tire iron. 

“Why don’t more people keep guns in their cars?” Lincoln complained.

Michael spotted Heatwave approaching them, gun raised. “Look out!” He grabbed Lincoln’s arm, and the two of them jumped out of the truck just as Heatwave fired on it. They hit the asphalt, panting. 

Then Lincoln saw, amidst the people running away from the fire and ice, Veronica and LJ running towards them. “No! Get back!” he shouted.

Then the truck burst into flame, and the brothers had to roll away from it. Heatwave must have hit the gas tank, Michael realized.

“Okay,” Lincoln said. “I’m going to distract pyro me. You do your thing.”

“Be careful, Linc.”

“Yeah, you too.”

They ran in opposite directions, Lincoln towards Heatwave and Michael towards the far sidewalk. The five of them – Lincoln, Michael, Heatwave, Killer Cold, and Barry – were boxed into the street with the flaming truck on one side and the wall of ice on the other.

Barry threw lightning at Heatwave while Killer Cold picked himself up off from the ice. But Barry’s attention was split, and his aim was off. Heatwave dodged, and the lightning exploded against the nearest building. Lincoln used the opening to run at Heatwave and take a swing with the tire iron. It caught Heatwave across the temple but barely stunned him. Heatwave fired blindly and swung the flame around. Lincoln dodged, but the fire caught his left shoulder.

Meanwhile, Michael ran across the opposite sidewalk. Killer Cold fired at him, but Barry threw a flaming tire in its path instead. Michael got to the fire hydrant and quickly unscrewed the front cap with the wrench. Barry ran on the dry asphalt and launched himself at Killer Cold, over the ice, and punched him across the jaw. Both landed on the ground, but Barry slipped on all fours.

“Stupid tractionless shoes.”

Michael used the wrench to unscrew the top cap of the fire hydrant. Slowly, at first, water shot out the front. Then faster as the pressure released, and it shot across the road and hit Killer Cold at 1,500 gallons per minute. The water froze instantly on contact with Cold’s right arm and formed a solid block of ice around him. It kept freezing the water and followed its flow back to the hydrant, which burst and froze in a shower of ice.

Heatwave ran for Killer Cold and started to melt the ice with his gun. It was already starting to crack around Cold’s right arm when Cold flexed it. He shook half of the ice off.

Michael ran for Barry to help him up and away from the ice while Lincoln ran for Veronica and LJ, who were coming around the flaming truck.

In a peak of dramatic timing, a breach opened up right in front of the truck. Cisco – in full Vibe gear – jumped out. “Anyone need a rescue?” Then, grinning, he fired energy blasts at both Killer Cold and Heatwave, who were knocked backwards.

Lincoln ushered Veronica and LJ towards the breach.

“Dad?” LJ sounded scared.

“I know, just go.” Lincoln made sure Veronica and LJ went through before he turned toward Michael and Barry.

“You too, man.” Without further warning, Cisco pushed Lincoln through the breach.

Just as Michael and Barry had almost made it to Cisco, Killer Cold regained his footing. He shouted, “No!” and fired at Michael.

Barry spun the two of them. He took the blast across his left ribs, hip, and leg. He screamed in pain.

“Barry!” Cold yelled.

“Barry!” Cisco turned and fired at Cold again. 

Michael grabbed Barry around the shoulders and helped him hobble toward the breach. Cisco covered them, and finally, the breach closed behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gosh, this chapter was so painful to get down. I'm not good at action, and there wasn't even any banter to break it up. I am so looking forward to the next chapter, which introduces... everybody.


	5. Meet the Doppelgangers

**Earth-1**  
**STAR Labs**  
**Spring 2018**

“Iris! Activate the therma-threading in Barry’s suit.”

“Get him over here. You, sit here. You two, get out of the way.”

They appeared suddenly in a medical room. Cisco was shouting into his earpiece, and an unobtrusive-looking woman with brown hair and a business skirt tried to direct everyone out of the way. Michael followed her directions to get Barry on the bed, but then he was pushed out of the room and into a hallway.

Michael tried to calm his mind, but it wasn’t working. Barry had gotten hurt protecting them – protecting him. He had gotten hit by a car. He should be dead. He had gotten hit with a cold blast. He should be dead.

“Out of the way, Mick!” A woman pushed passed Lincoln and into the medical room.

“My name’s Lin – “ the door closed behind her, “Lincoln. Yeah.”

Cisco came out into the hallway and sighed loudly. “I am so over this, guys. Hey, are you alright?” he asked Michael.

Michael steadied his breathing. “Is Barry going to be able to run again?”

“Of course he’s… Oh! Right, you don’t know. Yeah. Super speed, super metabolism, super healing.”

Everyone looked at him with varying degrees of wonder and annoyance. 

Cisco seemed oblivious. “Yeah, he’ll be on his feet in, like, an hour and doing that annoying wooshy thing by tomorrow. Yeah, he’s totally fine.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” a new voice said. It was Cold.

Nerves frayed, Lincoln swung a punch at him. Cold dodged, grabbed his wrist, and pinned Lincoln to the wall.

“Quick reflexes, but your shoulder’s a tell.” Cold patted Lincoln on the shoulder and then let him go.

“Guys,” Cisco said, “this is Leo. He’s our friend. Please don’t punch him.”

Looking at him, it was obvious that he wasn’t Killer Cold. He looked to be about the same age, maybe 40, and was also dressed in dark clothing, but he lacked the manic look in his eyes. There was a visor hanging around his neck and a gun strapped to his leg.

He smiled gently at everyone, and Michael felt himself relax. It was strange looking at his own face – or what his face might look like in ten or so years. He didn’t think he had ever smiled like that in his life.

“Don’t worry, Cisco,” Leo said. “Hardly the first time Mickey’s tried to punch me.”

“Okay,” Lincoln said, “my name is not Mickey. Or Mick. Or Rory. Or Heatwave. I am Lincoln, alright?”

“Are you?” Leo asked. “You all look very frazzled. How about we get you all some coffee, I’ll give you a tour, and you can tell me all about it.”

“Yes,” Veronica agreed. “Coffee. Some sanity, please.”

“Alright,” Leo nodded. “Cisco, you’re needed in the cortex since Iris went in with Barry.”

“Where are we at?”

“Joe said they made contact with Earth-4’s Flash. He’ll approach Captain Cold there himself. Ray and Mick are having some trouble on Earth-16, but they expect to be back using the extrapolator within the hour. I think everyone should meet in the cafeteria then.”

“Sounds good. Then I’m back to work.”

Leo then looked at Michael. “So… where should we start?”

~

They were in STAR Labs in Central City on Earth-1. Neither of those things existed on Earth-29. It was also 2018. Apparently parallel Earths weren’t necessarily running at the same point in history. 

They found some windows. It was a completely foreign skyline. It was beautiful, though.

Veronica introduced them all to Leo. Leo in turn kept up a steady commentary about where to find everything. He had a way of talking that was either very sarcastic or very soothing. Michael wondered if he sounded at all like that. He thought he probably didn’t.

After a while, Leo lead them to the “cafeteria” on the ground floor. It looked more like a café that one might find in a museum. There were floor-to-ceiling windows on one side and long tables with breakfast foods set up on the other. Round tables with chairs filled the space in between. Many of them were occupied.

“Oh boy,” Lincoln breathed. “It’s… us.”

Michael counted five versions of him in the room and three of Lincoln. There were also several people that he had never seen before. Most of them were talking to the other person in their group rather than to each other, but two Micks looked like they were trying to pick a fight with each other.

Someone gave a wolf whistle behind him. It was a blonde woman in unnaturally tight black clothing. She held herself carefully, like she was always ready for a fight. Standing next to her was yet another one of Michael’s doppelgangers.

“I’ve had dreams that started like this,” she said.

“Me too,” the doppelganger agreed.

She looked at him, bemused.

“What? I’m a very attractive man.”

There was an elevator in the lobby a short distance away. It dinged and opened to let in Barry and his wife Iris. Barry was in his street clothes and using crutches, but he seemed fine. Dr. Caitlin Snow was with them.

There was bright blue flash of a breach opening, and another Flash and Cold stepped through right beside one of the tables. The Flash looked a little older than Barry, but Cold looked much older than Michael.

“I don’t feel good about leaving you here alone, Leonard,” the Flash said. “We can offer you protection until the killer is caught.”

“With the Justice League? I’ll pass. I’ll be fine, kid. Besides, you are here. Sort of.” He gestured to Barry. 

“My 20 year old doppelganger doesn’t count.”

“Come on, 25, at least. Flash, this isn’t my first time travelling interdimensionally, and Central needs you more than I do. Go home. If you want to be useful, let Sara know I’m safe and that I’ll be home in a few days.”

“Alright, fine. Just take care.”

“Always. And hey, we still good for July 4th?”

“So long as you don’t plan any heists this time, yeah.”

“Retired, Flash. Belle Reve was my last job, I swear. Probably. Anyway, I’ll see you at the barbecue.”

“Fine. See you soon, Leonard.”

“Later.”

With another flare of blue, the breach closed behind the Flash.

The older Cold wove his way to the food table and picked out a bagel. All the donuts were already gone. He waved to Michael. “Hey, children. Come join me.” He smiled, and it looked a little like Leo. Warily, Michael and his group did.

One of the Micks kicked at this older Cold’s chair. “You invite the Flash to your Fourth of July barbecue?”

“Sure, the whole Flash gang. I mean, I trained three of them; we’re pretty close.”

“So you must know his identity too,” one of the Snarts said.

“I don’t.”

“So, they come to a barbecue at your house in…”

“In uniform, yeah.”

“What do you mean, you ‘trained three of them’?” Mick asked. “Is that what you call robbing banks and jewelry stores?”

“Sure. The heists I did to make money, no one ever heard about until at least the next day. The ones in broad daylight? Those were for the Flash of it.”

Veronica couldn’t help but enter the conversation. “But… what… why would you do that?”

“The Flash and his Justice League protect the planet from alien invasions and, you know, spinning off its axis. If they can’t deal with the occasional bank heist or prison break, how are they going to stay in top form? Besides, a superhero needs a supervillain. That’s just sense.”

“There is so much to unpack there.”

Thankfully, the conversation was interrupted when Leo stepped in front of the chairs, pushing a transparent dry erase board in front of him. He had, apparently, changed clothes.

“Alright everyone, please take a seat,” he said. “My name is Leonard Snart. Feel free to call me Leo. Now, most of you have already heard this, but I am going to be briefing you all on what is happening so that we are all on the same page. Oh, I see we have a question already. Yes Ray. Palmer. For the sake of minimizing confusion, you will be called Palmer throughout this operation.”

“Dr. Palmer works also,” said a tall, dark haired man at the table closest to Leo. A version of Mick was sitting next to him, looking agitated. “But I was just wondering if we – the Legends, I mean – are going on a mission soon that I didn’t know about?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“Then why are you dressed in your Viking outfit?”

“Because I look fantastic.”

There were some general nods of agreement around the room, mostly from other versions of himself. Another man that Michael didn’t recognize at the front table chuckled.

Leo decided to continue. “As you are all aware by now, there are multiple versions of Earth in existence, many with alternate versions of ourselves, which we call doppelgangers. In this corner of the multiverse, we have charted 53 Earths. We are all currently on Earth-1.”

Leo wrote a 1 on the board with an oversized white marker. Next to it, he wrote the words ‘Team Flash & Legends’. He even drew the ampersand accurately. “Flash – Barry Allen – is this Central City’s superhero.” Barry waved at everyone from where he was standing beside Leo. “His team consists of Cisco Ramon, also called Vibe, Dr. Caitlin Snow, who will be wanting to do health checks on everyone at some point, Iris West, Joe West, and Harrison Wells. They are hosting us here at STAR Labs until Killer Cold is caught.”

“I managed to go decades without ever having to learn the Flash’s identity,” the doppelganger that did Fourth of July barbecues muttered to himself. “Thanks, amateurs.” 

Barry stepped up to take over for Leo. “Leo here – who is from Earth-X, the 53rd Earth – came to us four days ago because he had been attacked by doppelgangers that identified themselves as Killer Cold and Heatwave. Now, Leo is part of a well-organized military group, so they, along with his husband Ray,” the unknown man that chuckled at Leo earlier turned to wave at the group, “fought them off. Leo then called us to warn us that this guy is out there. Cisco contacted some of our friends in the multiverse, and that’s when we learned that these guys had already murdered three versions of Leonard Snart and Mick Rory in the last few weeks. Once we realized that Leo wasn’t a single target but rather one of many, we decided to gather together the doppelgangers we could for protection.”

Michael was fascinated at the intricacies they were describing. Lincoln, however, was rubbing at his face, and Veronica looked worried.

Leo wrote ’53 – Leo & Ray’ at the bottom of the board and then spoke up again. “I know that for some of you, this idea of a multiverse with doppelgangers, maybe even metahumans and superpowers, is completely new. For others, this is just Tuesday. But the Flash and I think that we would all be safer grouped together.”

“Doesn’t that just make us a bigger target?” one of the Snarts asked. 

“Probably,” Leo said. “But at least here we can control where he is going to attack.”

“It’s not just that,” Barry said. “This version of you – of Cold – is a metahuman. I fought him this morning on Earth-29. Heatwave was similar to the one I’ve fought in the past – uh, you,” he gestured to the Mick doppelganger in the front row, who shrugged, “but Cold was not. It looked like his gun had fused into his arm, and his cold powers were much larger and more versatile than the cold gun.”

“No one’s saying he’s copying me,” Dr. Snow muttered, “but he definitely is.”

Leo said, “We were able to recover all of you from 11 different Earths, including this one. The other Leonards and Micks we were able to locate were dead, never existed, were safer where they were, or said something very rude to Cisco.”

“This all sounds like The One,” the Mick doppelganger in the front said loudly.

“Which one?” Leo asked.

“He means the Jet Li movie,” Lincoln said from beside Michael.

“Who’s Jet Li?” Leo wondered.

“Your Earth is now the worst Earth,” said another Mick doppelganger. 

“Well, it was ruled by Nazis up until a few months ago, so… probably.”

There was a pause, then, “Fair enough.”

“On that note, I thought it would be good to brief everyone on each other.”

There was a chorus of moans and complaints. “We’re not going to go in a circle and introduce ourselves, are we?”

“If I thought for a second that I could get you all to do that, I would.” Leo said. “As it is, I’ll just be writing a summary up here. If you have a preferred name, please share it, as most of us are named Leonard Snart and Mick Rory. Doppelganger confusion is going to be inevitable, but we can try to control that.”

Next to ‘1 – Team Flash & Legends’, Leo wrote, ‘Mick-1 & Palmer’. “Now, this Earth’s Leonard Snart and Mick Rory joined the Legends of Tomorrow – time-travelling superheroes – three years ago.” There were several snorts at the word ‘heroes’, but Leo ignored them. “Leonard died two years ago, but Mick volunteered to help us here until the threat passes.”

“No I didn’t,” Mick in the front row said. He must be the Mick from Earth-1.

“Well, I might have volunteered us,” Ray Palmer said. He squirmed in his seat. “I was curious.”

“You took Mick out of the temporal zone,” the blonde woman said, “where he would have been perfectly safe from this serial killer, and brought him to a place with a bunch of reminders of his dead friend, because you were curious?”

“Well, when you say it like that…”

“It’s fine, Haircut,” Mick-1 cut everyone off. He tapped Palmer on the shoulder a few times, and that seemed to ease some of the worry out of his face. 

“Did he die at the Oculus?” Everyone looked at the doppelganger sitting beside the blonde woman. They were seated at the back-most table. He had his arms sprawled over the backs of the seats next to him. He was looking away, deliberately casual and uninterested in the answer, but his body was an uncomfortable line of tension.

“Yeah,” Palmer said. “It was… rough.”

“Just get on with your list, fake Snart,” Mick-1 said gruffly. His voice was older and much coarser than Lincoln’s. 

“Right,” Leo turned back to the board and started writing. “From Earth-2, we having joining us Mayor Leonard Snart.”

There were loud ‘boo’s from just about everyone as a well-dressed doppelganger stood up.

“Really, Snart? A politician?”

“Complain all you like, Mick, but it takes a lot more than a costume and a code name to keep Central City together these days. Though it is considerably easier without Zoom around, and I thank you for that, Flash. He killed my Mick, among many of his officers.”

“Officers?!” shouted Mick-1. “He had better have been a firefighter!”

“Police captain,” Mayor Snart said.

Mick-1 growled loudly and stood suddenly. He tried to stalk out of the room, but Palmer grabbed onto the arm that was reaching for the heat gun on his thigh. “No, Mick, you can’t set all of Earth-2 on fire. Mick!”

Mick-1 dragged Palmer out of the room still attached to him.

“Alright, Earth-4,” Leo said. “We have Leonard Snart as Captain Cold, retired.”

The oldest doppelganger present – the one that barbecued – waved his hand. He sat at the table with Michael and looked to be well into his fifties. He, like many others, wore a blue parka and had the cold gun strapped to his left leg. His coat was sleeveless, though, and showed off his collection of tattoos on well-muscled arms, and his gun was smaller, clearly meant to be used one-handed.

“I’m fine going by Cold-4,” he said. “I’m one of the Tuesday ones, for you newbies. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to this.”

Mick-1 stalked back in. Palmer followed behind, visibly breathing a sigh of relief. “I don’t know how to get to Earth-2 from here,” Mick-1 grumbled.

“Where’s your Heatwave, Captain?” Mayor Snart asked Cold-4. Everyone seemed fine completely ignoring Mick-1’s behavior. 

“Died last year.”

“In a fire?” Mick-1 asked.

“Lung cancer.”

“Yeah, that makes sense too.”

“I heard your Flash offer you protection,” one of the Snarts said. “What are you doing here?”

“I trust the Flash, but there’s no way I’m trusting my safety and that of my family’s or the Rogues’ to the Justice League. I’ve still got a kid at home.”

“You’ve got kids?” Veronica leaned forward, speaking for the first time since Leo started his briefing.

“Three.” Cold-4 pulled out his phone to show her pictures. “That’s Sara, my wife. Then Jen, Michael, and Tricia. Tricia’s starting college in a few months, then she’ll be out of the house too.”

“You are a terrible supervillain, that domestic,” Mick-1 complained.

“I was an excellent supervillain,” Cold-4 defended and retrieved his phone. “I was an internationally wanted thief by the time I was 25. I was a supervillain for over 30 years to three generations of the Flash and the Justice League, I led the Rogues for more than 10, and I have an entire wall dedicated to me in the Flash Museum’s Hall of Villains. But I am retired now, and I get to be whoever I want.”

“Well said,” Leo agreed. “Next we have Earth-11, where we traced Killer Cold and Heatwave to. It looks as though their Flash and his team is deceased.”

“Shame,” the Snart in the back drawled.

“Hey,” Barry bristled.

“I wasn’t being sarcastic, Flash. Life would be so much more boring without you around to torment.”

“Then… thank you?”

That Snart winked at him, and Leo decided to continue.

“Earth-16,” Leo gestured to the blonde woman and the Snart in the back row that had just spoken. “Leonard Snart as Captain Cold and Sara Lance as Black Raven.”

“Pleasure,” Sara smiled at the group. It was not a pleasant smile. “But we’re all friends here. You can call me Sara.”

Michael decided to stay away from that pair. 

“Earth-19. Leonard Snart as Captain Cold and Mick Rory as Heatwave.” He gestured to a pair sitting on one side of the room. 

“We’ll take Leonard-19 and Mick-19,” Leonard-19 said. He was apparently paying close attention to the introductions, but Mick-19 was playing with a lighter.

“We actually have a friend from Earth-19,” Barry offered. “Her name’s Gypsy.”

“The Collector?” Leonard-19 asked, guarded.

“Yeah. You know her?”

“By reputation,” he said but didn’t offer any further information. 

“Ray, what are you doing to my board?” Leo snapped at his husband, who was writing next to Leo’s notes. 

“Labeling everyone so that we actually remember who does what.”

“I don’t appreciate being referred to just as ‘retired’,” Cold-4 said.

“’Guy that has barbecues with the Flash’ is too long.”

There were general mutters of agreement.

“Fine, fine, whatever helps,” Leo allowed dramatically. “Next are Leonard Snart and Mick Rory from Earth-22.”

“We’re not scared of some meta Snart from another world, or whatever,” Rory-22 said. “But you’re snacks are worth the trip.” He shoved an entire Ho-Ho into his mouth. “You can call us Snart and Rory.”

Michael had been avoiding looking at these two since he walked in for fear of sensory overload. Instead of sitting, they leaned against the wall to Michael’s left. They were cyborgs. There was no other word for them. 

Rory-22 had several tubes that connected from one part of his body to another. Part of his head was covered with metal plating. There was a red stone surrounded by metal embedded into his chest. He wore no shirt, and his arms and much of his torso were covered in burn scars. He didn’t appear to be armed, but Michael was willing to bet that he was.

Snart-22 wore more clothing, so Michael couldn’t see the extent of his cybernetics. The only thing he could see was the articulated plating on the back of his neck, along his spine. He had a gun strapped to each thigh, but neither looked like the others’ cold guns. He had yet to say anything, but he watched everyone with an intensity that made Michael wonder if that’s what he looked like when he was studying the yard at Fox River.

“The snacks here are amazing,” Leo agreed with Rory-22. 

“Are you guys also criminals?” Lincoln asked.

“It depends on who you ask,” Snart-22 finally said.

“I’m asking you, kid.”

Snart-22 scoffed at the kid moniker. He was clearly older than Lincoln. “Then no, not unless you count ignoring Krung’s idiotic rules. We just try to survive.”

“Alright, let’s move on. From Earth-27, we have Leonard Snart as Citizen Cold – hey, me too! – and Mick Rory as Heatwave making the rest of the room uncomfortable by sitting as far apart as possible. They are freedom fighters against the superpowered Crime Syndicate.”

“Len is fine,” Len-27 said, though he was rolling his eyes at the comment about them sitting apart. 

“Mickey.” That was the only response from Mickey-27, who was actually standing in the back of the room near the Earth-16-ers. 

“Oh no,” Dr. Snow sounded distressed. “Are you heroes against evil versions of us?”

“Yes,” Len-27 said. “But the speedster is named Johnny Quick, not the Flash.”

“Is he… really bad?” Barry asked.

“He murdered my sister and all my friends.”

“I’m really sorry.”

“Not you, kid. Not even a doppelganger of you. So don’t let it worry you. What about these ones?” Len-27 waved with one finger at Michael and his group. “They seem to be the odd ones out.”

“Yes,” Leo said as he wrote ’29 – Michael, Lincoln, Veronica, & LJ’ on the board. “Michael Scofield is my doppelganger, Lincoln Burrows is Mick’s, LJ is Lincoln’s son, and Veronica is their friend.”

“Roni?” Mick-1 turned around in his seat, apparently having looked behind him for the first time. His brow scrunched together when he saw Veronica, but he didn’t comment.

“I have a son?” Mick-19 asked from where he sat behind them. “Who thought that was a good idea?”

“Hey,” Lincoln protested.

LJ, clearly uncomfortable but trying, said softly, “I don’t think there was a lot of thinking involved. At least, not with his brain.”

Most of the room burst out laughing. Lincoln looked betrayed, Veronica looked exasperated, but Mick-19 leaned over and clapped his hands on LJ’s shoulders. “I like this one. Let’s try to make sure he doesn’t get violently murdered.”

Michael decided he needed to steer the conversation away from the possible murder of his nephew, at least while said nephew was in the room. “Since we are the odd ones out, it doesn’t look like we need numerical designations.”

“Actually, no,” Leo said. Then he pointed at another doppelganger. Like Michael, he was younger than most here. He sat by himself and, so far, hadn’t engaged with the conversation at all. “This is Michael Scofield from Earth-30.”

“Alright, then I will be Michael-29.”

Leo nodded. “And would you prefer Michael or Scofield?” he asked of the doppelganger.

His eyes came into focus for the first time, and he looked at Leo. “Scofield-30 is fine,” he said softly.

“Where’s your Mick? Or Lincoln,” Cold-16 asked.

“He died,” Scofield whispered.

Something went cold in Michael’s veins. He saw, out of the corner of his eye, Veronica take Lincoln’s hand in hers. LJ stiffened.

“Two days ago?” Michael asked, steel in his voice.

Scofield just nodded.

Michael clenched his hand and forced himself to keep his breathing steady. Not here, in front of LJ.

He heard Leo offer condolences and say something along the lines of keeping everyone else alive. Then he told everyone where to find sleeping arrangements, and the group started to break up to explore the habitable rooms.

Not here.

~

Leo was calling after everyone to “please stay in groups so that you’re less likely to get murdered, yes I know none of you are going to listen to me”, but Lincoln wasn’t listening. Cold-4 was seated across from him, playing on his phone while the others filed out of the room. Lincoln leaned forward to set his arms on the table in front of him.

“So, your wife’s name is Sara? Like her?” He gestured towards Sara-16, the Black Raven.

“No, not Lance,” Cold-4 said. “My wife’s maiden name is Tancredi.”

Michael blanched, and Lincoln had to press his lips together to keep from laughing. “Really? And how did you two meet? She didn’t happen to be a prison doctor, did she?”

“Actually… she was. First time I was in max security. I told her I’d take her to dinner once I was out.”

“And then what?”

“And then I got out and took her to dinner.”

“Well, isn’t that the sweetest. Michael, don’t you think that’s just the sweetest?”

“I’m not listening to you, Lincoln.”

~

Leo’s board ended up looking like this:

1 – Team Flash & Legends, Mick-1 & Palmer  
2 – Mayor Snart, clearly the most crooked here  
4 – Cold-4, retired  
11 – Killer Cold & Heatwave, bad guys  
16 – Cold-16 & Sara-16, thieves  
19 – Leonard-19 & Mick-19, smugglers  
22 – Snart-22 & Rory-22, cyborg survivors  
27 – Len-27 & Mickey-27, freedom fighters  
29 – Michael-29, Lincoln, Veronica, & LJ, criminals but the good guys?  
30 – Scofield-30, structural engineer  
53 – Leo & Ray, 4-ever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first scene I wrote for this story. In fact, this story was just an excuse to write this scene. It was so much fun.
> 
> In case you're wondering, Cold-4 is from the animated Young Justice continuity, but his characterization is based in part on this scene from Justice League. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48EgFehHS5Q


	6. STAR Labs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For reference:  
1 – Team Flash & Legends, Mick-1 & Palmer  
2 – Mayor Snart, clearly the most crooked here  
4 – Cold-4, retired  
11 – Killer Cold & Heatwave, bad guys  
16 – Cold-16 & Sara-16, thieves  
19 – Leonard-19 & Mick-19, smugglers  
22 – Snart-22 & Rory-22, cyborg survivors  
27 – Len-27 & Mickey-27, freedom fighters  
29 – Michael-29, Lincoln, Veronica, & LJ, criminals but the good guys?  
30 – Scofield-30, structural engineer  
53 – Leo & Ray, 4-ever

The rest of the morning was spent in a bustle of activity. Caitlin utilized STAR Labs’ PA system to page everyone, one by one, to the med bay for an exam. She took x-rays and an ultrasound of Michael’s lungs to make sure there wasn’t any permanent damage from Killer Cold’s attack. Michael tried to stick around for Lincoln’s exam, but his brother waved him off, saying that he didn’t need Michael’s hovering raising his blood pressure.

Michael walked back to the cortex and found Barry, Cisco, and Iris arguing over a computer. “Excuse me,” he said. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“No, Michael, come on in,” Iris said. “We’re just trying to think up ways to track Killer Cold if and when he enters this universe.”

“I still think tracking drops in temperature is our best bet. It’s worked on the cold gun, and it’s worked on Frost.”

“I know, Cisco,” Barry said, “but that only works when his powers are active. That doesn’t exactly give us a lot of warning.”

“I was actually wondering about that too, in a way,” Michael said. He felt uncomfortable in the cortex. It was clearly where Team Flash spent the most amount of time. Everyone had a favorite chair they were sitting in, and they moved around each other with a level of familiarity that made it clear he was an outsider. Still, “I was wondering how you tracked Lincoln and me to Fox River. You didn’t even know our names, but you found us.”

“I vibed you,” Cisco said. “Well, no. I vibed Leo.”

“We found some doppelgangers by talking to the Council of Wells,” Barry said, though that meant little to Michael. “Other times we were able to find an Earth’s Team Flash and ask them. The rest – including you – Cisco vibed Leo and directed it towards a specific Earth frequency. It gave us his doppelgangers and, usually, Mick’s too.”

“Why can’t you do that for Killer Cold? He’s one of Leo’s doppelgangers too.”

“Hey, I tried,” Cisco objected, “and it didn’t work.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I got nothin’. Kaput. He’s blocking me somehow.”

“How can he do that?”

“Dunno. But it’s happened before. The Thinker – this guy we’ve been dealing with recently – has done it too. He even booby trapped his, I don’t know, aura or whatever. I try vibing anything around him, and I get some sort of psychic backlash. That guy’s not even a meta.”

“Alright, if you can’t… vibe Cold,” Michael had to force himself to use vibe as a verb, “then what about finding out how they are moving around. For that matter, is it possible they’re still on Earth-29?”

Cisco shook his head. “I vibed the street where you guys fought once we got Barry settled. They were gone.”

“How are they even getting from Earth to Earth in the first place?”

“That’s a valid question,” Iris agreed. “Travelling among Earths isn’t exactly easy.”

Cisco stood up and took a marker over to one of the ubiquitous clear boards. “There are basically two ways to travel between realities. Well, three. No, four. Four ways. Final answer.” He started a list on the board. “One, metas, particularly breachers.”

“That’s the general name for metas with Cisco’s power set,” Barry explained. “Speedsters can do it too, but…” Barry made some confusing hand gestures. “Well, aiming’s hard, okay?”

“Two, and this is the most likely one for Killer Cold, technology, like my extrapolators.”

“We know Earth-19 has similar tech, but their use is illegal,” Iris added.

“But it stands to reason that if such technology exists in two known worlds, it could exist in others,” Michael concluded.

“Exactly,” Iris said.

“Three and four are less likely,” Cisco continued. “Temporal disasters, like that wormhole a few years back, and magic.”

There was a pause. Michael didn’t move or respond. Everyone looked at him.

“You okay there?” Barry asked. “Was it the wormhole or the magic that broke you?”

“No no,” Michael assured. He pressed his thumb between his eyes. “I am fine. Please… continue your discussion.”

Team Flash went on to say that temporal disasters weren’t exactly easy to create, and magic had it’s own set of rules and drawbacks. For not the first time in the last three days, Michael realized he was way out of his depth.

~

STAR Labs really wasn’t set up to house 17 dimensionally displaced people for an indefinite amount of time. There was one office that had been converted to a guest room with an en suite bathroom, but it had already gone to Leo and Ray. Everyone else was settled on dusty couches in long-abandoned offices, the couches in the rec room, or the beds in what Cisco had called “Harry’s room”. 

Fortunately, STAR Labs used to be one of those employers that expected its employees to frequently work overnight, so several of the communal bathrooms also had shower stalls. It wasn’t the most private, but it was a definite step up from prison.

Michael stepped out of one of these showers with a towel around his waist and over to the counter of sinks. The mirror was fogged a little, so he was startled when he heard a mocking wolf whistle behind him. He turned to see one of the Snarts by the entrance wearing an obnoxiously fluffy white robe. He was Cold-16, if Michael was right. 

That was worrying. All of the Snart doppelgangers had a tension about them, as if they expected to be attacked at any moment, but Cold-16 was the worst of them. Michael had pegged him as being the most volatile and possibly the most dangerous of all of them. Michael hadn’t even heard him come in.

Cold-16 was looking at him in a way that made him uncomfortable, like T-Bag or even Haywire did.

“I’d ask if you see something you like, but that seems a little narcissistic for both of us,” Michael said, turning back to look at his doppelganger through the reflection in the mirror, which was rapidly clearing. It wouldn’t be a good idea to let on that he unnerved him.

“As a matter of fact, I do see something I like.” Cold stepped forward, and it set Michael on edge. He lifted his finger as if to trace one of Michael’s tattoos, and Michael spun to grab Cold’s hand first.

Michael grit his teeth and growled, “Keep your hands off me.”

“Oh, there it is,” Cold-16 said. He smiled sharply, and Michael felt the danger in him. “The bite. I was beginning to wonder if there was anything Cold in you. But don’t worry.” He cocked his head to one side, and the smile reached his eyes. “I just meant the blueprints.”

That quickly, all the tension left Cold’s smile and Michael’s body.

~

And that is how, half an hour later, Lincoln found Michael sitting cross-legged on an ottoman in the rec room, shirtless and with one arm out. Five other Michael doppelgangers were in the room, hovering over more of those transparent dry erase boards and a projector that displayed the devil tattoo onto one wall. There were several blue parkas draped over chairs. Everyone was arguing loudly, and Leo had Michael’s right arm in his hands.

“Michael, what the hell is going on?”

Michael looked over his shoulder at Lincoln, and Lincoln was surprised to see that his brother was smiling gently. Normally, Michael was careful to avoid letting others get into his personal space.

“They’re solving it, Linc,” Michael said. Lincoln had to come closer to hear him properly over all the other discussions. 

Leo snapped at one of the doppelgangers – Lincoln thought it was Leonard-19 – to get his attention. “No, it’s not Bolshoi Booze. If you look at it from this angle, they’re numbers. Write these down.” He called out the numbers while Leonard-19 wrote them on a board.

“They’re coordinates,” Leonard-19 responded. “Have to be. I’ll look up where they are.”

“A year of my life,” Michael said to Lincoln, “spent making a puzzle only I could understand, and they’re solving it.”

“The cards are clearly a phone number,” Cold-16 was saying to Snart-22, “but the barcode isn’t. I think they’re directions.”

“I will solve your mysteries, Cute Poison,” Cold-4 said, apparently to a sketch of Michael’s bottle tattoo.

“It’s a mnemonic,” every other doppelganger said at once. It didn’t sound like it was the first time.

“It won’t make sense to anyone but him, so just let it go,” Leo said.

Then Barry walked into the room carrying a ridiculously large textbook and looking triumphant. “Copper sulfate and phosphoric acid can both be found in industrial products. When combined, they produce sulfuric acid strong enough to eat through metal. Boom!” He slammed the textbook down on a table where two Micks were playing cards. They did not look happy to have their cards scattered everywhere. “Chemistry wins!”

“Barry,” Michael said, “that was legitimately very impressive.”

“Wait, he’s right?!” Cold-4 asked. Michael nodded, and because Leonard Snart was a dramatic little bitch in any incarnation, Cold-4 threw his marker at the board.

~

A little later, Lincoln stood on the balcony off of the rec room. It was barely getting dark outside, and the view was beautiful. It wasn’t the inside of a cell. 

Michael was still inside, being a little nerd with his little nerd doppelgangers.

“Mind if I join you?”

Lincoln turned abruptly at the voice. He hadn’t heard anyone come up behind him, and it was startling to hear his brother’s voice so obviously older.

“Uh… sure. You’re… the mayor, right? Earth-2.”

“That’s right.” Mayor Snart handed Lincoln a beer, which he happily accepted.

“Yeah, I can tell from your clothes. You dress like Michael used to before… well, before.”

“Before he abandoned his life and his work to save your worthless life?”

“Yeah, that, thanks asshole.”

“Don’t take it personally. I would do the same for my sister. And she, stubborn woman that she is, would do the same for me.”

That placated Lincoln a bit. “Didn’t know you had a sister.” He took a drink of his beer. It was pretty good. Something called a ‘microbrew’. A little unnecessarily extravagant for his tastes, but decent.

Mayor Snart nodded. “Lisa. You know, I was the first one the Flash approached once he learned about Killer Cold? I had no intention of leaving my home. I have security, connections, _protection_ there. But Lisa refused to leave while I might be in trouble. I wasn’t going to let her get hurt in the crossfire. So I left with the Flash. And… she is definitely going to kill me when I get home.”

“Then here’s to our siblings,” a new voice said. It was Sara-16 on the balcony a level above them. Lincoln wondered if anyone in this building made noise when they moved. Leaning over the railing, Sara raised her own beer. “Who constantly pull our asses out of the fire even when they definitely should know better by now.”

“Cheers,” both men agreed.

~

Harry was sleeping at Joe’s. Iris was going to head home soon. Barry wanted to go with her, but he didn’t trust so many criminals in one place, not even Snart. Especially not Snart. Or Mick. Barry had spent most of the afternoon putting out fires, both literal and figurative.

For now, Barry needed to check on Michael-29 and his family. They had a minor present, and he wanted to make sure they were sleeping safely. Then he needed to make sure they had everything for breakfast in the morning. Feeding this many people was like feeding another him. Then – 

“Oh jeez!” Barry startled when he turned a corner to find one of the Snarts snooping around the hallway outside the cortex. He wore a blue parka and a cold gun, so Barry wasn’t sure which one he was. “Aren’t any of you asleep?”

“Doesn’t seem like it. I’ve run into two others casing the place already.”

“Does that mean you’re casing the place?”

“Absolutely.”

“Figures.”

“And what about you, Barry Allen? Leo said you’ve been collecting us for four days. Have you slept at all since that started?”

“I have! I… slept in the car on the way to DC yesterday.”

Leonard meandered closer, as if he was thinking about what to say next. “Kid, this facility is far from secure, and our best defense against Killer Cold is you, so I think I speak for everyone when I say that I would prefer you to be in top form.” At that, he brushed an invisible speck of something from Barry’s shoulder.

“I’m working on it. Just a few more things to do, and then I’ll go to bed. Promise… err…”

“Leonard-19.”

“Right. Leonard. Sorry. The doppelgangers are confusing.”

“Of course. Seeing you here and not on television is odd for me also.”

“Television?”

“Oh yes. Barry Allen – the Flash – is one of the government's top enforcers. Very famous. Very well liked publicly.”

“Enforcer?”

“Like Gypsy. Her specialty is hunting dimensional travelers, but there are all sorts. The speedsters are particularly famous, the Flash most of all.”

“But my identity’s public? And I work for the government?”

“There’s no such thing as vigilantism on my Earth, and most metas work as Enforcers. Police, military, government – they’re all the same in my country. There to maintain the order of things.” Leonard-19 gestured at ‘order’ in a way that Barry was becoming very familiar with.

“And let me guess. You don’t care for the order of things.”

“I’m a thief, a smuggler, and a murderer. No, I don’t care for the order of things.”

An alarm sounded. It wasn’t the first time that day. Barry hung his head in defeat. “Gotta go. Please don’t steal anything.”

“Good luck, Scarlet.”

~

Just a few minutes before that, Michael and LJ were exploring some of the lower levels of STAR Labs. Lincoln and Veronica needed to talk some things out, so Michael took LJ off their hands.

“What do you think’s down here?” LJ asked.

“It appears this hallway goes all the way around the complex with only equipment access panels. If I had to guess, I’d say we are right around the actual particle accelerator.”

“Okay, so what is a particle accelerator?”

“It’s a big machine used to crash things like protons or Higgs bosons together to see what happens.”

“What’s a Higgs boson?”

Michael hesitated a minute. “It’s a subatomic particle that…”

“You don’t know, do you?”

“It has something to do with gravity, I know that.”

LJ laughed then.

“You know, we’re supposed to have one of these opening in Switzerland next year,” Michael said.

“Do you think we’ll get super heroes?” LJ asked, much too excited. “We should go to Switzerland.”

Michael laughed. “I honestly don’t know anymore.”

Then he heard something. He held up a hand, and LJ stilled and quieted. Michael listened carefully. It sounded like a steady, mechanical whine along with something else. It was coming from a turn in the hallway up ahead.

“Stay here.”

“No way.”

“Stay here.”

Michael crept forward silently, and, in spite of what he was told, LJ followed. Michael peeked around the corner and found one of his doppelgangers leaning over a large, circular door at the end of the hall. That had to be the entrance into the accelerator. But what was his doppelganger – Michael couldn’t tell which – doing down here? He was using his cold gun at a very focused setting to cut through some of the mechanisms around the door.

Michael spotted a digital control panel off to the right, behind his doppelganger. It looked like it needed a fingerprint scan to access anything, but there was a panic button on the screen.

Michael motioned for LJ to stay quiet, then he stepped carefully into the hallway and up the ramp. So far, he wasn’t noticed. Then he smacked the panic button, and an alarm blared.

Cold-16 – and it was Cold – spun around, resetting his gun. He looked at Michael, said, “Really?” and fired. It wasn’t at Michael. His shot blasted out into the hallway just as Barry ran into their corridor. But he seemed ready and dodged around it easily.

“Dangit, Cold, you couldn’t last the day?” Barry yelled.

“Cold habits die hard, Flash.”

Both Barry and LJ groaned at the atrocious pun, and Michael almost laughed.

Barry ended the fight quickly when he darted back in and snapped some futuristic handcuffs that glowed blue onto Cold-16’s wrists. He took the cold gun and handed it to Michael. “That’s it. You’re going to have to be supervised or something.”

“You going to lock me in your secret prison, Barry?”

“What?” Michael asked. This was the first he had heard of any such thing.

“Oh, didn’t you know? Team Flash locks up metahumans without trial or due process in STAR Labs. That’s what this thing is now,” Cold tipped his head towards the door to the accelerator. 

“We used to, we didn’t have a lot of options at the time, it was a mistake, and you’re not going to distract me with that.”

“Really? Seems to have worked.” With a click, the cuffs were off of Cold and one was locked around Barry’s wrist.

Barry shifted back, surprised, but Cold, laughing, crowded forward into Barry’s space. Then he grabbed the back of his head and kissed him, open-mouthed and filthy. He slid a leg between Barry’s before either he or Michael recovered from their surprise. Then Barry shoved at his shoulders at the same time Michael pulled him back by one arm.

“What the hell?!” Barry yelled.

“What is the matter with you?” Michael asked.

“Oh, what villain doesn’t enjoy a little sexual tension with his hero?” Cold-16 said as if that justified everything. “You can’t tell me that you and your Cold didn’t have… something extra to your relationship.”

“No, we did not. You know what, come on, we’re leaving.” Barry took Cold-16 from Michael and led him away.

“Ah, so it was unrequited, then. You couldn’t tear your eyes away from Iris long enough to realize that he went off to save the world on a time ship just so that you would pay attention to him.”

“That isn’t true. You just stop talking.”

~

Inside the pipeline, Len-27 jumped off of the cell he was examining when the alarm went off and left the way he came in. Stupid amateurs trying to go in through the front door. 

~

They didn’t go to the living area. Michael made LJ go back to his dad but followed Barry. He needed to know more about this prison. 

Barry pulled Cold-16 into the cortex by his elbow. Michael followed behind. “Cisco, tell this man he’s crazy. Our Snart did not have a thing for me.”

“He totally did, dude,” Cisco said without looking up.

“What? No, he didn’t. Caitlin?”

“Sorry, Barry, but I think he might have. He did tend to fixate on you whenever you were in the room.”

“Yeah, because we were nemesis…es. Nemeses. Who sometimes helped each other out. And got along pretty well when we weren’t trying to kill each other.”

“Oh, baby,” Iris came over and patted Barry on the arm while Cold-16 slid out of Barry’s grasp. He looked very smug. “It wasn’t totally one-sided, honey.”

“What? That’s crazy. You know what? You only met him for, like, 30 seconds that one time, so you don’t even…” he waved his hand around at his wife, the cuffs swinging wildly “… just no.”

“And in those 30 seconds, he checked you out twice, and you grabbed him by his jacket and pinned him against the fireplace.” Iris grabbed her husband’s shirt carefully and backed him against the main desk to demonstrate. Michael suddenly felt a bit uncomfortable to be watching this. It looked very intimate.

“He broke into our house,” Barry defended, though he was a bit distracted by Iris’ nearness. “I was threatening him.”

Then Iris pressed in closer so that their bodies were touching from chest to thighs. Michael got very uncomfortable. Barry blushed from neck to ears.

“There was rather more pelvis involved than was strictly necessary for a threatening,” Iris said softly.

Barry sputtered. “I… that… no… that’s not true.” He pointed at everyone individually, but Michael thought it might be just to keep his hands busy. “The pelvis thing isn’t true.”

“Do we need to give you guys the room?” Cisco teased.

“See?” Iris said and stepped away from her husband. “That was my question then. And then he said ‘Merry Christmas’ without a hint of sarcasm. Baby, that man had it for you bad.”

Michael realized that this conversation was not going anywhere useful, so he decided to leave. Quickly.

~

A short while later, Cold-16 found his way back to Sara-16.

“Got it?” he asked.

Sara held up a thumb drive. “Get this. Gideon called me ‘Captain Lance’ and just gave me whatever information I wanted. Nice work on the distraction.”

“The kid was easy to rile up.”

“Michael or Barry?”

“Yes.”

~

Upset, Barry eventually found his way to Leo, who was watching something on several computer screens in a dark office. Everyone else had finally gone off to bed. They talked for a little while, mostly about Earth-1’s Leonard Snart.

“Do you think 16 is right? Did Snart go with the Legends because of me?”

“I doubt anyone made that man do anything he didn’t want to do, Barry, including you.”

“The speed force told me that he sacrificed himself – became a hero – because it’s what I would have done. That I inspired him. I inspired him to die, Leo. How messed up is that? And then there’s all these others here, alive. Some of them never joined the Legends, or didn’t stop the Time Masters, or someone else died at the Oculus, or whatever. But they’re alive, and mine’s not, and it’s just not… And it’s ridiculous, because I’m realizing that I barely knew him. It feels like I knew him, but in reality we only talked a handful of times, but it feels like it was more than that. It’s just not fair, Leo.”

“No, no it isn’t. But this isn’t another weight you need to carry. Maybe see this as an opportunity to get some closure. Talk to them.”

“I thought I was talking to you,” Barry said cheekily.

Leo chuckled. “Yes, I suppose you are. But now for the most important question – Which of my doppelgangers do you think is eavesdropping from outside the door?”

“I was guessing 16. He’s been a pain all day.”

“Really? I think it’s Michael-29.”

Michael leaned into the room. “You know, I don’t usually get caught.”

Leo chuckled. “You’re in the wrong group for that.”

Barry wished them both goodnight and asked that they not set off anymore alarms while he was trying to sleep in the cortex. They made no promises.

Leo showed Michael what he was working on. It was surveillance footage from the diplomatic building in Star City on Earth-X. Or Earth-53. Michael learned that the names were interchangeable. The footage showed Killer Cold bypassing several security checkpoints with nothing more than a recognizable face and a casual wave.

“He knew you were well known enough to walk past,” Michael noted.

“He also knew right where to go. See? He headed straight for the sixth floor, where I was in a meeting. Under any other circumstances, I’d say someone on my team sold me out.”

“But he also knew where to find me on Earth-29 within moments of my being there. An informant couldn’t tell him that.”

“Exactly."

There wasn’t footage of the meeting itself. All Michael saw was grainy black-and-white footage of Killer Cold blasting his way into a room and then being blasted out a minute later by what looked like a beam of light.

“I’d be dead if Ray hadn’t been in there too.”

On another screen, Heatwave ran down the hall to back up Killer Cold.

“Heatwave was already in the building,” Michael observed. Leo nodded.

Then Ray peeked into the room. “Leo, it’s after midnight.”

“I’ll be right in.”

Ray Looked at him.

“I will. Just a couple minutes.” Leo stood and stepped over to kiss his husband goodnight.

Michael looked away from them.

“Alright. See you soon. Good night, Michael.”

“Good night, Ray.” 

Ray left, and Leo turned back to Michael.

“Does our relationship make you uncomfortable?”

Michael didn’t answer for a minute. “Yes, I suppose it does.”

“Because we are both men?” Leo didn’t sound defensive at all. He sounded genuinely curious and even concerned for Michael.

“That surprised me, certainly. But no, I don’t think that’s it.”

“What is it then?”

“Was… it easy to be with him?”

“Was it easy to be in a homosexual relationship while hiding from an army sent to kill any that didn’t fit in their mold? No, easy it was not.”

“I don’t mean circumstantially easy. I mean… was it easy for you? To love him? Or at all?”

“Ah, I see.” Leo sat back down beside Michael. Michael couldn’t look at him. “You mean am I as damaged emotionally as you believe yourself to be?”

“Yes,” Michael whispered.

“Have you ever been in love?”

“I don’t think so. I… there were a couple of times when I thought, maybe, I could. But it didn’t work out. It couldn’t.”

“Tell me about them. One of them was Veronica, right?”

Michael looked at Leo then, startled.

“Don’t worry,” Leo said. “Most wouldn’t notice. But I pay attention.”

“I’m not holding a torch for her or anything like that. But she’s always been important to me, to us. We kissed once and both immediately regretted it.”

“And the other?”

Michael hesitated to share this. It was so raw. It was only a few days ago that he would feel his skin burn wherever she touched him. “Sara Tancredi. I was just meant to use her to get access to the infirmary. But she was extraordinary. I didn’t want to hurt her.”

“Two women that, under different circumstances, you might have been able to love. I feel I should point out that it was obvious from the beginning that neither were going to work out for you. It’s possible you set yourself up for failure.”

“My therapist has pointed that out.”

“I’m glad to hear you’ve done therapy. But no, in answer to your question. It was not easy to let myself fall in love, to be vulnerable. It took effort on my part. And, well, the right person certainly helped.”

Michael smiled, and it felt less sad this time. 

“You’re not broken, Michael.”

Michael nodded. “Thank you.”

Leo stood up. 

“I should get to bed.”

“Goodnight Leo.”

“One more thing. I didn’t bring this up before, but my middle name is Michael.”

~

Hours later, when everyone was finally asleep, Lincoln walked down the hall in the middle of the night in search of a bathroom. These hallways all looked the same. He turned down a corridor and found Cisco standing there, looking dazed.

“Oh, uh, hey. Where’s the bathroom?”

“Eleven is a prime number,” Cisco said. His hair was matted on one side, like he’d been sleeping on it.

“… Okay.”

“But one is prime. Zoom said so. Eleven is prime to me, but this is prime. Prime, not prime. 2,400,067 is prime, but 1,400,067 is not prime.” Cisco pressed his finger to his lips and pushed to one side, making his lips deform comically.

“Okay, you should go back to bed. Here,” Lincoln carefully touched Cisco’s arm to steer him to the cortex when Cisco suddenly latched onto Lincoln’s shoulder with both hands.

“Whoa!”

There was a wild look in Cisco’s eyes. “Don’t trust Christina Rose. She’ll kill you to get what she wants.”

Lincoln felt his temper flare. “My mom is dead, Cisco.”

Cisco stepped back, suddenly looking much more normal. “Yes she is.” He shook his finger as if to himself. “I’m not supposed to be here. I’m gonna go back to bed.” Then he opened a breach and stepped through.

“That kid is such a weirdo.”


	7. The Next Morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm siiiick.
> 
> Also, still for reference:  
1 – Team Flash & Legends, Mick-1 & Palmer  
2 – Mayor Snart, clearly the most crooked here  
4 – Cold-4, retired  
11 – Killer Cold & Heatwave, bad guys  
16 – Cold-16 & Sara-16, thieves  
19 – Leonard-19 & Mick-19, smugglers  
22 – Snart-22 & Rory-22, cyborg survivors  
27 – Len-27 & Mickey-27, freedom fighters  
29 – Michael-29, Lincoln, Veronica, & LJ, criminals but the good guys?  
30 – Scofield-30, structural engineer  
53 – Leo & Ray, 4-ever

Michael’s dreams, when he finally got around to sleeping, were odd, to say the least. Breakfast, however, was much easier than the day previous. For starters, only half as many people were there.

“Where is everyone?” LJ asked.

Michael looked around. Cold and Sara-16 were absent, as were Snart and Rory-22 and Len-27. Michael hadn’t actually seen Scofield-30 since yesterday’s breakfast, but that was probably for the best. Michael didn’t know what he would do if he saw Scofield again, what with his empty skin and his dead brother.

“You’re surprised half of us bailed?” Leonard-19 asked. He was stirring something in his mug. “None of us are particularly fond of being locked up.”

“Guess not,” Michael responded. 

“You don’t pass up free food,” Mick-19 said. He was piling a plate with a variety of fruit and pastries.

“The man says smart things,” Mickey-27 said. Ray Palmer was seated next to him, eating something that looked to be mostly egg whites.

“Can’t argue with that,” Lincoln agreed.

Michael carefully didn’t roll his eyes. But then he saw something at the end of the breakfast bar. He leaned in close to Lincoln so that only his brother would hear him. “Lincoln, look. They have a hot cocoa bar. I have missed hot cocoa.”

He beelined for the mugs and cocoa dispenser, trying (and likely failing) to not look too excited.

“Mike, you were locked up for a month. I was locked up for three years. Calm down.”

“Only thing that could make this better are some – “

There was a red blur on the other side of the buffet table, and suddenly there were mini marshmallows in his mug. Michael looked over to see Barry smiling at him from across the room. He hadn’t been there a moment before.

“I like it here, Lincoln. I like it a lot.”

Mick-1 walked in, pinching his nose closed with one hand. There was a bit of blood leaking out of it. Palmer pointed to his own nose with a questioning look. Mick-1 just said, “The old one doesn’t like being called old.”

Cold-4 walked in behind him, looking smug. He nodded a hello to Michael and then drank some milk.

~

It was halfway through an argument between Mickey-27 and LJ over whether or not it was okay to stack waffles like pancakes that Leonard-19 dropped himself into the seat next to Lincoln. Michael was chatting with Cold-4 about something nerdy, and Barry had left to check on something in the cortex.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you, Lincoln,” Leonard-19 said, “are you and Michael really brothers?”

“Brothers? Yeah.”

“Really? With those eyes?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Suddenly, a breach opened at the far end of the room. A woman dressed all in black jumped out and immediately blasted at Mayor Snart, who had the good sense to duck out of the way.

The room exploded into activity as everyone ducked for cover and pulled out weapons.

“Leonard Snart and Mitchell Rory, you are under arrest,” the woman in black shouted.

“You’re name is Mitchell?” LJ asked from behind the buffet.

“Repeat that and die,” Mickey-27 said.

“I think you’re a little outnumbered, Gypsy!” Leonard-19 shouted. He stood and fired at the woman in black. She fired back using blasts from her hands. Both used a sustained blast, and the two shots exploded in the middle.

Lincoln grabbed Veronica by the shoulders and pulled her towards the elevators.

Gypsy finally realized how many Snarts and Rorys were present. “Wonderful. Doppelgangers.” She opened a breach at her feet and fell through it just as two blast of cold and one of fire lanced through the air.

She reappeared on the stairs above the breakfast room and blasted at Leo. He rolled away and fired his cold gun up at her, but she had already breached away. She appeared again beside Leonard-19 and grabbed his arm in a painful-looking lock. But before she could breach away again, Mick-19 jumped up from behind a table and pressed the muzzle of his heat gun against her neck.

“Doooon’ even think about it, Collector,” Mick-19 said. He powered the heat gun.

“No no no no.” A red blur blew into the room and snatched Mick-19’s gun out of his hands.

“Agh, come on, Red,” Mick-19 growled.

“Mick, Gypsy, everyone, just back off,” Barry yelled at the room at large.

“We’ve been over this before, Flash,” Gypsy said back. Leonard-19 charged his cold gun in one hand while Gypsy tightened her grip on the other. “These two have broken the dimensional jumpers laws of Earth-19. You know it is my job to bring them in.”

“Gypsy,” Barry pleaded, “just wait a minute. There’s more going on here.”

The elevator doors opened, and Michael and Cisco ran out of them.

“Gypsy, just wait wait wait,” Cisco yelled as he ran up to her. 

Most of the Snarts and Rorys lowered their guns when Cisco ran into the room but didn’t holster them. Even Mayor Snart was sporting a handgun.

“Cisco, you had better have a very good explanation for what is happening here,” Gypsy shouted.

“Gypsy, Snart and Rory are in danger,” Barry explained quickly. “Another set of doppelgangers is trying to kill them. They didn’t flee Earth-19. We took them. We brought them here for protection.”

Gypsy rolled her eyes and huffed coarsely. Then she shoved Leonard-19 towards Barry. Firearms started to go away.

“Of course you have some sort of noble excuse to ignore Earth-19’s jurisdiction,” Gypsy groused. “I don’t know why I’m even surprised. You’ve always had a relationship with your criminals that I will never understand. And I don’t understand how you are defending him?” She pointed at Leonard-19. “Captain Cold and his Rogues are the worst there are. He’s a murderer and a human trafficker.”

That finally got everyone to pause. No one moved, but the shift in the air was obvious. Even the other Rogues seemed to hesitate.

After a moment, Barry said carefully, “I don’t know about their crimes before coming here. But I told them that I would protect them, and I will keep my promise. For now, I will lock them up. After Killer Cold is dealt with, we will return them to Earth-19. After that, it’s not my business.”

Gypsy gave a hard, mocking smile. “Damn right it’s not.”

Warily, Cisco stepped between Barry and Gypsy and put his hands on his girlfriend’s shoulders. “Hey, babe. Why don’t we go over here and talk for a bit, okay?”

Gypsy let Cisco steer her towards the elevator.

Barry turned back to Leonard and Mick-19. He opened his mouth to say something, but Leonard cut him off. “I owe you nothing, Barry Allen. Not an explanation or validation. You don’t know me, and you don’t know my world.”

“No, I guess I don’t.” With nothing else to do, Barry whisked Leonard and Mick-19 off to the pipeline.

~

It felt wrong. Michael didn’t doubt that Leonard-19 was hiding information. All of the Snarts seemed shady and were likely holding back a lot. Michael himself was doing his best to keep his ears open and his mouth shut. But he didn’t think any of them had the level of inhumanity it took to sell people like slaves. So he told Lincoln to take Veronica and LJ and lie low in an office and found where Cisco locked up Leonard-19’s cold gun. It took only a bolt cutter to liberate it.

Cisco really needed to improve his security.

Michael took the cold gun and made his way down to the pipeline entrance. He examined the damage that Cold-16 had done the night before. He had cut through the pressure locks that kept the heavy door closed. Cold had even done most of the work. If Michael could finish cutting through the third pressure lock, the door should open as a safety measure.

The cold gun was fingerprint locked. Michael was amazed and delighted that he could unlock it. It took him a few tries to find the water saw setting, but then he cut through the rest of the metal in just a few minutes. He was amazed at how easily the gun handled. The door slid open. 

On the other side, he found a small cell with transparent doors. Inside were Mick and Leonard-19.

“Well, well,” Leonard-19 drawled, “Michael. I’ll admit, I was expecting Len-27. He’s the hero type.”

“Nah,” Mick-19 grunted, “told you this one has a bleedin’ heart. Prob’ly can’t stand to see his favorite brother locked up.”

The two laughed at Michael’s expense.

Michael clenched his jaw. “I’m not here to break you out.”

“You ain’t?” Mick said. He sounded like he doubted that.

“Not without an explanation, anyway.”

“We don’t owe you one anymore than we owe Barry,” Leonard argued. “We are everything she said. Thieves and traffickers. Money, booze, weapons, and yes, even people. We move it all, and sometimes we move through people too.”

“Somehow I doubt it’s that simple,” Michael said.

“It is to the Collectors and the government they serve,” Leonard said.

“Then tell me that they’re wrong. Tell me that you’re not a monster that sells slaves as easily as he sells prohibited alcohol.” 

Leonard side-eyed Mick. Mick just shrugged, uncaring. Sighing dramatically, Leonard looked back at Michael.

“Our country covers most of the continent. We have the strongest military in the world. That’s largely attributed to the high percentage of metahumans within it, and _that_ is attributed to the Watchtower Initiative. Under that initiative, all children are tested for the metahuman gene during puberty, and those that test positive are enlisted into the military, some as young as ten years old. The Watchtower Initiative is what gave the government prodigies like the Flash and Gypsy.

“But some people – parents, usually – selfishly don’t want to see their kids weaponized. They will give up anything – their homes, their fortunes, their safety – to flee to the southern continent. And those families may end up poor in an underdeveloped land, but they’re free. And if those fortunes find their way to me in the end, well, who am I to argue?”

Michael let that sink in for a second. Then he let out a breathy laugh. “You’re a coyote.”

“Is that what they’re called?” Leonard asked.

Michael nodded.

Mick gave a short laugh and said, “Coyote. I like that. We might have to use that instead of Rogues.”

“Let’s not,” Leonard said flatly.

“Alright,” Michael said. “I believe you.”

“Yay for us,” Mick complained. “What’re you gonna do about it?”

“These cells are meant to maintain function without power. Which means there has to be a way to open it without that fingerprint access. If I can disengage this cell from the pipeline entrance, I should be able to access the exterior of the cell…”

Michael trailed off as ice crept down the cell doors from the ceiling. It froze the doors, and they went visibly brittle. Without further explanation, Leonard-19 kicked the doors, and they shattered outward towards Michael, who had to backpedal out of the way.

Leonard and Mick stepped out of the cell just before it disengaged from the pipeline by about a foot. Through the crack, Michael could see Len-27 lying on his back on top of the cell with his cold gun propped casually across his stomach.

Leonard-19 patted Michael on his shoulder condescendingly. “So close to being competent, kid.”

Len-27 waved and then disappeared further into the pipeline.

Mick-19 grunted, and Leonard retrieved his gun from Michael. “We’ll find a place to lie low until the Flash deals with Killer Cold. Until then, thanks Michael.”

But then Barry, now in his Flash costume but with the cowl down, appeared in the pipeline entrance. Leonard-19 immediately charged his cold gun and pointed it at Barry.

“Shame,” Leonard said, “I thought at least the other one was competent enough to shut off alarms.”

“No, no don’t!” Michael shouted at Leonard. “Barry, this isn’t what it seems. There’s more going on here.”

“Michael, Michael, I know,” Barry placated. He looked at Leonard-19. “I know you’re not a bad guy. But we just had to wait for Gypsy to leave.”

Leonard and Mick exchanged suspicious glances, then Leonard resumed his aim at Barry. “What do you think you know? We haven’t told you anything.”

“No, but I did,” said a new voice.

None other than the Flash stepped into the hallway with Cisco trailing behind. He looked a little different. His uniform was darker, and it’s lines a little more severe. On one wrist was a silver bracelet with a blue device in it. He wore no cowl but instead had only a tinted visor over his eyes. He pressed the insignia on the side of the visor, and it retreated into the pieces behind his ears. He was visibly older than Barry-1, closer in age to Leonard-19, but he was definitely Barry Allen.

“Barry, what are you doing here? We have a drop scheduled _tomorrow_,” Leonard practically growled, but his cold gun was immediately lowered.

“You left without telling me. Without even telling me you were in trouble,” Barry-19 shot back.

“That is why I left in such a hurry. I couldn’t risk my murderous meta doppelganger showing up and messing with the job. Lisa can handle my part, but yours is irreplaceable. _Go home_.”

“You stubborn ass.” This new Barry stepped into Leonard’s space and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Lisa and I will handle the job tomorrow. But if you’re not back in a few days, I am coming to get you.”

Leonard rolled his eyes, but there was obvious affection there. “You’re risking capital punishment being here. Leave before someone realizes you’re gone. I doubt my doppelganger will wait too long to make a move. I’ll be back in a couple days.”

“Promise.”

“I will do no such thing.”

Barry-19 huffed but smiled. “Stubborn,” he said again. “OK, I’ll see you soon. Please don’t get killed.” Then he leaned forward and kissed Leonard. Leonard returned it only slightly, clearly uncomfortable with the audience, but he was smiling too.

Then Barry-19 turned to Cisco and said, “Alright, Vibe, let’s get me out of here before your girlfriend-but-it’s-complicated-right-now finds me.”

Everyone else had found various spots on the walls that were very interesting to look at for a few seconds, so Cisco jumped when he was addressed. “Yep, let’s definitely do that now,” he said way too loudly.

Once they left, Leonard-19 made a cutting motion with his hand and said, “I would appreciate it if no one mentioned anything they just saw or heard to anyone.”

“Yep, no problem,” Barry agreed quickly. Then, to Michael, “Especially to Iris and Cold-16. They would be unbearably smug.”

~

Mick Rory didn’t really like the whole interdimensional travel thing. There was plenty to do back on their Earth. This just made things more complicated. But Snart had a job – God knew why – so they were doing it.

“He’s doing that twitching thing again,” Mick called out to the almost empty parking lot. He just wished the new guy wasn’t so creepy.

Killer Cold walked to the back of the SUV where Heatwave was holding open the rear door. Inside, the back seats had been folded down, and a mattress was laid out. There were a few blankets bundled into a nest on it and little else. Sitting on the mattress, back against the side of the car, was Cisco Ramon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing is hard, guys, and this is the most difficult thing I have attempted to write. Please be patient with me.


	8. Central City

Cisco flicked open a lighter and held it near his arm. He sat among his nest of blankets and pillows in the back of the SUV.

“Mick, how did he get your lighter?” Killer Cold asked flatly from outside the back of the vehicle.

Heatwave patted down his jacket, checking that it was actually gone. Then he just shrugged. Cold rolled his eyes.

Cisco held the lighter closer to his arm and said, “I burned my family alive, and I like to set things on fire.”

“No, that’s me,” Heatwave said.

“He’s vibing you, Mick,” Killer Cold explained.

“They labeled me an arsonist,” Cisco growled, “but that’s wrong. Me? I’m a pyromaniac.” Cisco held the lighter closer to his skin, and Heatwave recognized the smell of burning skin and hair. Cold just watched. “Being an outsider is a good thing. You get to tell people to go shove it.”

Heatwave nodded in agreement.

“I’d rather die than speak German.”

“Focus, Cisco. How many of Mick are in there?” Cold climbed up into the back of the SUV and sat across from Cisco.

“Less talking, more doing,” Cisco demanded.

“We will, don’t worry about that. Just tell me how many.”

“Five,” Cisco mumbled as he stared at the flame against his arm. The skin was starting to blacken. “Four with fire at his side. One is scared. For his son, his girlfriend, and his brother.”

“I don’t have a brother,” Heatwave said.

“You are his brother,” Cisco said, looking at Cold.

“Interesting,” Cold said. Then he reached over and snapped the lighter closed. Cisco sagged against the back of the car as Cold tossed the lighter back to Heatwave. He pulled out the first aid kit and started to treat the burn on Cisco’s arm with burn ointment. Cisco just slumped sideways onto his bed while Cold held his arm up to wrap it.

“You’re the best guy I ever knew. You may not think you’re a hero, but you’re a hero to me.”

“Who’s that supposed to be?” Heatwave asked. Cisco tended to just spout off whatever he was seeing and hearing without any context.

“Don’t know,” Cold answered. He set Cisco’s arm down and tucked a blanket over him. He pushed Cisco’s matted hair back out of his face and stroked it gently to keep him calm. “Tell me, Cisco, how many of me are in there?”

“Don’t hurt Barry.”

“No, Cisco, no. Just me. How many?” He pressed his cold hand against the bandaged burn on Cisco’s arm to sap the pain out of it. Cisco visibly relaxed.

“Nine. Five with cold guns. One is already as good as dead. Three have never killed, but one wants to. They’re scared. They’re so angry. They’re near Barry. They’re going to hurt Barry,” Cisco whimpered and was on the verge of tears.

“No, Cisco, never again.” Cold laid down next to Cisco and pulled him in close to his body. The decrease in temperature from his right arm calmed him again. Cold stroked Cisco’s back and whispered, “I won’t let any of them hurt Barry ever again.”

Heatwave closed the doors and decided it was time to move the vehicle.

~

It was to no one’s surprise that the remaining Snarts and Rorys disappeared after the encounter with Gypsy. All but Cold-4, who Barry, Cisco, and Michael found in the cortex, sitting in Cisco’s chair with one ankle crossed over the other thigh.

Cold-4 smirked at them as they came in. “Let me guess. You had a crisis of conscience, and now the 19s have flitted away.”

Barry tiredly rubbed both hands down his face. “Something like that,” he muttered. “Everyone else gone?”

Cold-4 nodded. “You blame them? I’ve been shot at more times in the past two days than the previous two years.”

“Then why are you still here?” Cisco asked. “In my chair.”

Cold-4 shrugged, as if that answered anything.

Barry pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket. “I’m going to have to call Joe. With a bunch of Captain Colds and Heatwaves running around, who knows how the CCPD’s going to react.”

Cisco put his hand on Barry’s to stop him. “I, uh, might have already thought of that a few days ago. And then posted some event ads with the city.”

Michael finally voiced what everyone was thinking. “What is that supposed to mean?”

~

WELCOME COSPLAYERS! CENTRAL CITY PARK’S FIRST ANNUAL ROGUES COSTUME DAY!

Cisco’s plan of announcing a Captain Cold and Heatwave cosplay day definitely worked. If anything, it seemed to have worked too well. The banner stretched across the park entrance was very large. The park was very crowded.

“Oh my god,” Lincoln said. “Is that kid wearing a big blue coat and wielding a blow dryer for a cold gun? I will admit that is hands-down the cutest thing I have ever seen. LJ, why weren’t you that cute at that age?”

“Poor genetics,” LJ responded without hesitating. 

Cold-4, Veronica, and Michael all laughed. Kids in costume were running everywhere. Food trucks were selling villain-themed foods like Trickster’s Surprise Chili and Captain’s Cold Shaved Ice. Michael thought that was tempting fate. He also wondered how this was organized so fast.

Lincoln was wearing a fireman’s jacket. Michael himself was wearing one of Snart-1’s blue parkas. Leo had been using it. Barry wanted to give him Snart’s cold gun too, with the freon cartridge taken out, to complete the outfit. Cisco refused. Cold-4 had said he would keep an eye on ‘the children’ and left with Michael and his family. As soon as they were out of Cisco’s eyeline, however, Cold-4 had handed him a cold gun nearly identical to Leonard-19’s.

“This must’ve been Snart-1’s,” Cold-4 had said. “I literally just found it sitting on a desk.”

Michael adjusted it to its lowest setting. Cold-4 told him that would be enough to knock someone on their ass but not give any permanent frostbite.

In the park, to Michael’s surprise, a woman with a teenage daughter approached them with one of those camera phones. “Excuse us. You are probably the best cosplayers we’ve seen so far. You mind if we get a picture with you?”

Michael’s jaw dropped a little, but Cold-4 was quick on the uptake. “Of course not,” he said smoothly. “Here, I’ll take the photo. You two get in the shot.”

“Oh, alright then,” Lincoln said. He and Michael, still a little confused, posed for the photo with the two women.

“May I ask something?” Michael said to the mother once Cold-4 had taken the photo.

“Of course.”

“Why do you like Captain Cold? I’m not from around here. I got hired because I look like him. And I don’t quite get it. My understanding was that he was some thief. He even killed people.”

The woman nodded her head in understanding. “Yeah, he did. And some of them… well, do you know who the Santinis were?”

Michael shook his head.

“There were a mob family that used to run drugs and guns through the east side of town. I run a shop there. They had me under their… ‘protection’. Then, one day, they crossed Captain Cold and Heatwave. I never saw the Santinis again after that. The drugs disappeared practically overnight. The streets in that area were never safer than when Captain Cold and Heatwave owned them. Truth is, I would take a supervillain over normal criminals any day.”

“Wow,” Veronica breathed.

Behind the women, Cold-4 held his hands over his heart in a mocking show of emotion.

Then the teenager said, “Plus the Flash said that Cold saved us all somehow. Wish we knew more about that. I ship ColdFlash either way.”

Veronica snorted into her hand.

“I don’t know what that means,” the mom said.

“Take my advice,” Cold-4 said, “don’t Google it.”

~

They spent a couple of hours wandering the park. Twice, Michael thought he spotted one of his doppelgangers only for it to end up being a guy in a costume. But eventually they got hungry for some proper food. Michael’s group wandered away from the park in search of lunch. 

They didn’t get far before they were approached by yet another fan. He was a tall, handsome man wearing a long coat.

“Those costumes are great,” the man said as he stepped up to Michael. “Mind if I get a picture?” He held up his smart phone. 

“Not at all,” Michael said. They were getting used to the occasional photo shoot. As they stepped in close for the picture, Michael realized he didn’t see Cold-4 around to join them.

“Thanks guys,” the man said. “You know, you really do look like them. And I heard that the real Snart and Rory went off time travelling.”

Michael’s hackles rose. He didn’t think that was public knowledge.

“It kind of makes me wonder,” the man continued, this time with an edge to his voice, “if that’s the kind of thing that might mess with someone’s age.” Then he stepped fully in their path, blocking their way. 

“You’re going to want to step out of the way,” Lincoln warned.

“No, I don’t think so, Rory.” A sudden burst of wind spun around him, and dark storm clouds formed overhead unnaturally fast. Then he shouted behind them. “What do you think, Piper?”

Another man, this one in a black hoodie, stepped out from a nearby alleyway, effectively surrounding them. He was younger, smaller, but he wore some sort of gauntlets that looked similar to Cisco’s myriad of devices.

“Facial recognition finds a one hundred percent match,” the new guy said. “They’re definitely Cold and Heatwave.”

Michael held his hand up in front of Lincoln’s chest to stall the confrontation and said, “No, look, we’re not. We just look like them.”

Thunder rumbled in the clouds above, and there was a mechanical whine from the gauntlets behind them.

Then there was Cold-4’s gun pressed against the first stranger’s temple.

“Cool it, Mardon. No need to lose our tempers.”

Mardon side-eyed Cold. Cold smiled back, all teeth and warning. Then the sky cleared, the gauntlets powered down, and Cold pulled his gun back. Mardon and Cold laughed and clasped hands. Cold slapped Mardon’s shoulder.

“How you doing, Mardon? I haven’t seen you in an age.”

“Don’t you mean an ice age?” Mardon snarked back.

“Oh the puns,” the younger man came up to them. “I may miss working with Snart. His jobs were always very profitable, well-executed, elegant almost. But the puns. Oh the puns.”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Piper,” Mardon said.

“It’s kind of my thing, Mark,” Piper responded. “And I told you this wasn’t time travel. It’s an alternate reality situation. Am I right, Snart? Tell me I’m right.”

“You’re right, Hart,” Cold-4 agreed.

“Hah! Pay up, Mark!”

Grumbling, Mardon pulled a 100 dollar bill from his pocket and handed it to Piper. Or Hart. Michael wasn’t sure what his real name was.

“I’m even willing to bet that this is all somehow Ramon’s fault,” Piper said.

“No it’s not,” LJ mumbled.

“Yeah, Mardon, what are you doing, holding up a kid?” Cold smacked Mardon in the chest.

LJ said, “I’m not a kid!” at the same time Mardon said, “He’s not a kid.”

“See?” Mardon continued. “Come on, I was probably half that age the first time I committed a felony.”

“That’s not a good measuring stick,” Veronica objected.

“I don’t like her,” Mardon said.

Cold-4 shrugged. “She’s a lawyer. You’re not supposed to.”

“Why don’t you introduce us, Cold?” Michael said.

“Of course. Mark Mardon, the Weather Wizard, and Hartley Rathaway, the Pied Piper. Rogues, these are Michael, Lincoln, Veronica, and LJ. They don’t have any fun monikers because their reality is apparently really boring.”

Lincoln and Michael shared a smile. Alliterative supervillain names. Called it.

Cold-4 kept talking. “Gentlemen, while I have you here, let me ask. Are there any threats I should know about? People with a grudge against this reality’s Snart that might take it out on me or the kid?”

Michael figured ‘the kid’ was, in this case, him.

Mardon thought about it for a second. “The Santinis, obviously. Or what’s left of them. Scudder. Maybe James Jesse. It’s always kind of hit or miss whether or not he’ll pay any attention.”

“But not you, Mardon?”

Mardon smirked. “Snart left me hanging against the Flash a while back. But I owed him one already. As far as I’m concerned, we’re square.”

“Good to know.”

Mardon moved as if to leave but asked, “Saints and Sinners later?”

“Sure.”

With a blast of air, Mardon flew up and landed on the roof of a nearby building.

Piper stepped up to Cold. “So, how old are you, Snart?”

“Sixty two.”

“Whoa, really?” Veronica expressed the surprise everyone felt.

“Damn, Snart. You aged well.”

“Keep it in your pants, Piper.”

Piper huffed then looked sideways at Michael. “We’ll see.” He winked at Michael then used blasts from his gauntlets to follow Mardon.

~

The rest of the day was uneventful. Even though it was well into spring, it started to get pretty chilly out once the sun started to set. Michael thought the parka was uncomfortably warm during the day, but he was thankful for it now. He did tend to get a little cold.

Cold-4 was leading them through the city. He seemed to know where he was going. 

Michael thought it was actually quite beautiful at night.

“So, Uncle Mike, I was wondering. And, I don’t care what the answer is. You’re my uncle, and family no matter what. But are you, uh…”

Michael shared an amused smile with Veronica. He had been expecting this question ever since the introductions yesterday, but he was surprised it was from LJ, and in front of everyone too.

“Am I…?” Michael tried to lead his nephew into finishing the question.

“Are you gay?”

Michael smiled and looked over his shoulder to where LJ was walking behind him with his father. Lincoln also looked amused by the question.

“No. But I’ll admit that meeting all my doppelgangers almost made me consider revisiting that question.”

“It was disproportionately queer in that crowd,” Cold-4 agreed.

“You sure, Michael?” Lincoln’s tone was teasing, but Michael thought the question was probably genuine. “You were never particularly interested in girls growing up.”

“I was interested in a few,” Michael said softly. He was careful to not look at Veronica this time. “Besides, I… checked.”

“You checked?” Lincoln sounded like he was about to start laughing in earnest. “When?”

“In college, and that is the extent I am going to answer questions about that.”

Lincoln and Cold-4 started laughing. Veronica shivered and said, “We should probably be headed back.”

Cold-4 shook his head. “I don’t know about you, but I’d rather get a real dinner than eat more commissary food.”

Veronica groaned. “And a decent bed too. That does sound nice.”

“Glad we agree.” He stopped on the sidewalk, and the group stopped around him. He turned abruptly and grabbed Lincoln by the shoulders. He shifted him a bit to one side. “Would you stand right there for 68 seconds?”

“Uh, why?”

Michael dropped his head into his hand. “Because you’re blocking line of sight from the security camera on the next building over. Don’t turn around.” He had to grab both Lincoln and LJ to keep them from doing exactly that to look. He didn’t need their faces on the camera either.

Cold-4 grinned. He had stopped them right next to an ATM. He pulled the piece of gum he had been chewing out of his mouth and used it to cover the ATM camera before stepping fully in front of it.

“Are you serious?” Veronica said. “You’re going to rob an ATM just right in front of us.”

Cold-4 pulled some sort of card that looked like a credit card but wasn’t out of his pocket and inserted it into the card slot. “Well, it’s not like I have valid currency for this dimension. You?” Then he pressed some buttons on his phone and then ones on the ATM.

“No, but that’s hardly the point. Aren’t you retired?” Veronica asked.

“Retirement’s no reason to get sloppy. LJ, would you hold these please?” The ATM spat out stacks of twenties, and Cold-4 handed them to LJ as quickly as he could. “No one will even know it’s empty until the morning.” He checked his watch. “And with six seconds to spare. Alright, let’s walk this way without turning around to get caught on camera, yeah? Good. Dinner and a hotel’s on me.”

~

They got a suite. And room service. A lot of room service. Lincoln dropped face-first into a feather duvet on a king sized mattress and sighed loudly.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been on a bed this nice,” he said, voice muffled into the sheets.

Michael wanted this. He wanted his family safe and relaxing in luxury instead of running for their lives from a government conspiracy or a serial killer doppelganger. But it wasn’t what they got.

“It’s not for us, Lincoln,” Michael said. His heart fell as he said it.

Lincoln raised his head up enough to glare at Michael. “It’s not?”

“Nope,” Cold-4 agreed. He handed Veronica several thousand dollars in twenties and a couple of cell phones. He had been busy. “It’s for you two. Until this whole thing is taken care of.”

“You’re ditching us?” LJ objected.

“It’s just for a little while,” Michael placated.

LJ wasn’t having it. “We’re not just going to leave the two of you – three of you – on your own.”

Lincoln groaned and sat up. “No, they’re right. You two aren’t targets. We are.”

LJ looked unhappy, but Veronica had already accepted it. It was safer with them separated. As Lincoln picked himself up off the bed, she stepped over to him and kissed his cheek. “You watch out for each other, you hear?”

Lincoln smiled and nodded.

A few minutes later, Michael, Lincoln, and Cold-4 were back outside in the chilled night air.

“Where to now?” Lincoln asked. “Back to the labs? I got to tell you, I’m pretty tired of that already.”

Cold-4 gave a sharp grin and said, “Let’s get a drink.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mostly a transition chapter. The next one will be much more exciting.


	9. Nightfall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For reference:  
1 – Team Flash & Legends, Mick-1 & Palmer  
2 – Mayor Snart, clearly the most crooked here  
4 – Cold-4, retired  
11 – Killer Cold & Heatwave, bad guys  
16 – Cold-16 & Sara-16, thieves  
19 – Leonard-19 & Mick-19, smugglers  
22 – Snart-22 & Rory-22, cyborg survivors  
27 – Len-27 & Mickey-27, freedom fighters  
29 – Michael-29, Lincoln, Veronica, & LJ, criminals but the good guys?  
30 – Scofield-30, structural engineer  
53 – Leo & Ray, 4-ever

Michael was not surprised to learn that Saints and Sinners was a bar or that Cold-4 knew exactly where to find it.

“It looks a bit different,” Cold-4 said. “It’s part of a strip on my Earth. No side alleys.” He reached for the door, but it swung open first.

Mark Mardon and Shawna Baez stepped out. Mardon took one look at Cold and went, “Nope.”

Shawna quickly followed, shaking her head and muttering, “Mm-mh.” 

Michael sighed. He thought he knew what they were going to find in there.

Inside, Sara and Mickey-27 were finishing up a game of pool, Mayor Snart and Len-27 were pushing a couple of tables together so that Mick-1 could set down shot glasses, Leonard and Mick-19 were eating dinner with Snart-22 nearby, and Cold-16 was arguing with Rory-22 over at the juke box. At least, Michael thought that’s who everyone was. If there were other patrons in the bar, they were making themselves scarce.

“Oh, come on,” Cold-4 complained. “This is my bar.”

The woman behind the bar yelled, “Here’s yet another Old Fashioned for whichever one of you ordered it.”

Cold-16 retrieved the drink. 

The bartender asked him. “It all this on one tab?”

“No!” five people answered at once.

“Yes,” Mick-1 answered. He pulled out a credit card and handed it to her.

“Good,” she said, “’Cause I didn’t want to try telling you all apart. Thank you,” she looked at the card, “Raymond Palmer.” She rolled her eyes at Mick but took the card behind the bar.

“I’ll have a beer,” Lincoln ordered. “Whatever’s on tap.”

Michael spotted a promising sign propped up on one of the shelves. “I’ll have a couple of those pickled eggs.”

“That’s disgusting,” Lincoln said.

Cold-4 held up a couple of fingers to indicate he wanted two also.

“This ain’t everybody,” Mickey-27 said. “Who we missing?”

“The other Scofield,” Leonard-19 said from across the room. “Haven’t seen him all day.”

“He’s holed up in the labs,” Lincoln said.

“Nah,” Mick-19 said. “I think the Killers got to him, and nobody noticed.”

Or cared, Michael thought. “Leo and Ray,” he said out loud.

More than one person snorted. 

“Does he even drink?” Cold-16 mocked.

“Not enough,” Mick-1 answered.

“Well, that tight-ass Leo with his tight-ass white board might be a complete twat,” Leonard-19 started and held up an empty shot glass, “but I will grant him this much. Never have I ever.”

“No,” Mayor Snart said. “We are better than this.”

“Never have I ever!” Leonard-19 insisted, “punched a Nazi in the face.”

Mick-1 lined up a bunch of shot glasses, poured something clear and probably very toxic into them, and promptly knocked one back.

“Well, alright then,” Leonard-19 said, “well done you.”

Surprisingly, Cold-16 and Sara-16 also took shots. “Time travel,” Sara said by way of explanation. “We didn’t even start it.”

The others started to drift towards the middle tables. 

“Now, do trashy neo-Nazis count?” Lincoln asked. “Like trailer trash white guys that shout really racist things at protesters?”

“No,” Leonard-19 clarified, “it’s got to be proper Nazis. Like swastikas and guns and heils – the whole bit.”

“Okay, then no.”

“I’ve got one.” Cold-4 took a seat next to Michael while some others pulled more chairs over. There were rather a lot of them here. “Never have I ever time travelled.”

Roughly half of the people present took a shot and hissed once they drank whatever Mick-1 had poured them. Rory-22 nodded at his glass and said, “That’s nice.”

Michael decided that this was actually an excellent information-gathering technique. He had to admit that he was incredibly curious about the other worlds. Now that he thought about it, that was probably why his doppelganger started this game in the first place. “Never have I ever broken someone else out of prison. Not for lack of trying.”

Lincoln laughed when every single person at the table – including Mayor Snart – took a shot. “Wow, Michael. I think I’m seeing the similarities now.”

“My favorite one was this really messed up place in Panama,” Cold-4 said.

“Sona!” exclaimed three people at the table. Michael assumed that was the name of the prison, as they all seemed to be nodding in camaraderie. 

“My turn,” Lincoln said. “Never have I ever set a building on fire.”

There were boos all around, and every Mick took a shot. So did Sara and two Snarts. “What?” one defended. “They make for excellent distractions.”

“You sure?” Michael ribbed his brother. “Not even Mr. Amaris’ shed?”

“I told you that wasn’t me. It was Terry Jace, and he was a moron.”

Mick-1 said, “I guess this makes you the boring one.”

“Okay, never have I ever until five seconds ago, been accused of being ‘the boring one’,” Lincoln objected.

Michael took his first shot. He was the only one. “That felt kind of personal,” he coughed roughly. That stuff was awful.

“Never have I ever slept with the Flash!” Sara-16 shouted.

There were cheers all around when Leonard-19 and Mayor Snart took a shot. 

Mick-1 narrowed his eyes at the mayor. “Didn’t your Flash turn out to be a serial killer? Not judging.”

The mayor’s expression shuttered for just a beat before he responded, “At least he was a little more age-appropriate than this Flash. Seriously, that kid’s barely out of high school.”

“He’s 29 and married,” Michael corrected. He didn’t know why he felt the need to defend Barry’s age, but he did.

“Enemies with benefits?” Sara-16 asked Leonard-19.

“Something like that,” Leonard-19 hedged. 

Rory-22 elbowed Cold-4. “Really? You two seemed pretty chummy in the hallway when he dropped you off.”

Cold-4 shrugged. “He’s just a chummy guy. Plus we’re both straight, if you can believe it.”

“I don’t,” Len-27 said.

“Stranger things have happened,” Michael defended. It was looking like he and the older, married Cold were the only completely straight ones among his doppelgangers. He wasn’t used to being in a minority in that regard.

“That’s true,” Mayor Snart agreed. “For example, never have I ever…”

~

Palmer had shown up at some point. Mick-1 had immediately handed him three shots and said, “Catch up. You’ve time-traveled, punched a Nazi, and been the boring one.” Now the two of them were arguing over the music. Or the bill. Michael wasn’t sure which.

Some time later, Michael was feeling more than a little fuzzy. He didn’t often drink more than the occasional beer or glass of wine, so even the three shots he’d had of Mick’s drain cleaner were running through him very fast.

Lincoln unsteadily stood up next to him with a very smug smile. “Never have I ever!” he announced to the room. Everyone had scattered a little and were in various states of inebriation, “made out with one Dr. Sara Tancredi.”

Cold-4 took a shot without blinking. He was playing pool with Snart-22, but they had shot glasses nearby just in case someone decided to keep playing. Like Lincoln.

“I don’t think that’s appropriate,” Michael complained. The room was tippy. Lincoln was ridiculously happy. Michael wanted to punch him.

“But have you ever?”

“And made out is a high school thing. We’re not in school, Linc.”

“But have you ever, Michael?”

Michael grumbled low in his nose and took a shot. 

Lincoln whooped and slapped him on the back. “I knew it.”

“It’s good Flash and Cisco came to get us,” Michael mumbled. “I would have ruined her. And Sucre. And C-Note. And Pope.”

“No, no getting gloomy, Michael. Here, have a drink.”

“Yeah,” Mickey-27 agreed from across the room. “You’ve only got a psychotic, super-powered version of yourself after you. No reason to get sad.”

“No. Never have I ever thought it was a good idea to get black-out drunk while there was a hit out on my life.”

Every single person in the bar took a shot.

~

Michael got dinner. It was greasy, but he felt better already. Beside him, Lincoln was talking to Mayor Snart again.

“Let me get this straight,” Lincoln said. “You are openly gay.”

“Right,” Mayor Snart confirmed.

“And you have a criminal history.”

“Juvenile, but yes.”

“How exactly did you get elected?”

Mayor Snart grinned. “In a landslide.”

~

That wasn’t Lincoln. That was Mickey-27. Or Mick-1. No, there was Mick-1. Where was Lincoln?

Michael finally spotted Lincoln chatting with Sara-16. Cold-16 was standing beside them, slipping on his jacket. It wasn’t the parka. He held Sara’s coat open for her to put on. Lincoln smiled at the both of them and then came over to Michael.

“Hey, Mike, you awake enough to head somewhere else?”

“Where?” Michael asked.

“We’re not sure. We’ll find someplace.”

Bad idea. Very bad idea.

“It’s…” Michael checked the time on a clock on the wall, “almost eleven.”

“Yeah?”

“This really isn’t a good time to go bar-hopping, Lincoln.”

“Completely disagree, Mikey. I’m going. Stay or don’t; it’s up to you.”

Asshole. Lincoln knew Michael couldn’t just stay behind again. He chased after Lincoln and the 16s out the door. The cold air hit him like a wall, and he suddenly felt much more awake.

“Coming kiddo?” Cold-16 asked of him. He had Sara’s arm in his and led the group closer to downtown.

“I’m 30!” Michael objected. He was dismayed to note that there was a hint of petulance in his tone.

~

They ended up in a much nicer part of town. There were still a few restaurants open for drinks or dessert, but Sara seemed to be looking for a club. But she found something else instead.

“Ahhh, that’s sweet.”

Michael looked across the street. Sara was looking in the window of a dimly-lit restaurant that was still open. Sitting at one of the tables was Leo and Ray, chatting and grinning at each other. They looked happy. They looked in love.

In a dark, bitter part of himself that he refused to acknowledge, Michel hated them in that moment.

“Adorable,” Cold-16 agreed, but there was something dangerous in his tone.

Cold had a brick in hand. Just as Michael shouted “Don’t!”, Cold ran a couple of steps into the empty street and threw the brick through the window, just missing Ray. Someone inside the restaurant screamed, and both Leo and Ray stood, immediately at the ready.

“Oh shit,” Sara chortled. Smiling, she grabbed Cold’s wrist and dragged him down another street.

“Yeah, we really want to be somewhere else now,” Lincoln said and chased after them.

“But…” Michael objected. He liked Leo and wanted to stay and help. But he heard sirens and decided that being not here was an excellent idea. He followed his brother.

They ran down a couple of streets, but Sara and Cold-16 were nowhere in sight.

“Where’d they go?” Lincoln asked. They could still hear sirens a few streets over.

“I’m guessing there.” Michael pointed at the entrance to what was obviously a club. It didn’t have a name displayed out front, but there was a bouncer and a couple of patrons exiting. The tell, however, was the clapboard sign on the sidewalk that read Captain Cold Cosplayers – first round free!

“Good call.”

~

Lincoln and Michael entered the club, quickly ushered in by the bouncer. They came in on a platform at the top of some winding stairs going down. They could see the crowd of dancers below them and the bar on one side. It was better lit than most dance clubs, and they could spot Cold and Sara already finding a spot to dance.

“So… this is a gay bar, then,” Lincoln said over the music. There were a few heterosexual couples among the dancers, but the group was overwhelmingly male.

“Looks like it,” Michael agreed.

“Was this world’s Captain Cold publicly out or something?”

“I don’t think he was publicly anything except snarky and well-armed.”

Lincoln tipped his head in agreement. Then he sighed. “What are we doing here, Michael?” he asked over the music.

“Those two are loose cannons. We need to get them back to STAR Labs.”

“And how do you suggest we do that?”

Michael sighed. Then he pulled out the phone that Cold-4 gave to him. 

“No,” Lincoln objected. “We are not calling Cold-4 or the Flash. I’m not going to be the snitch in this scenario, Michael.”

“Well, I don’t have any other ideas, Lincoln. This has gotten out of hand.” As he spoke, Michael’s eyes swept over the dance floor again, looking for ideas. What he saw instead was something entirely different.

The mirror behind the bar _rippled_. Then a well-dressed man stepped out of it. His eyes went straight to Cold-16, who was spinning Sara around the dance floor. The man reached back into the mirror and helped a woman step out beside him. One of the bartenders finally noticed them, dropped what he was holding, and fled. No one else seemed to notice them.

They stepped around the bar and made a beeline straight for Cold and Sara. They didn’t look happy.

“Sara,” Michael said. Then he shouted as loud as he could, “Sara! Sara!” He leaned over the railing and waved to get her attention.

“Mike, what are you doing?” Lincoln asked, a little embarrassed. A few people were looking at them, and the bouncer poked his head in.

The well-dressed man slipped a concealed pistol out of his jacket, and Michael screamed, “SARA!”

Finally, Sara’s head snapped up to look at Michael. She gave a confused shrug, and Cold-16 frowned at him. 

Michael pointed. “Gun!”

The two spun around just in time to see the man close in on them and point the gun at Cold. Sara blocked his arm with her forearm and knocked the gun out of his hand. Cold kicked him in the ribs.

The crowd right around them screamed and scattered.

“Scudder,” Cold-16 sneered. “This world really is different, because I’m pretty sure I killed you already.”

“You certainly tried, Snart,” Scudder replied, “but I’ve got a few new tricks this time.” He snapped his fingers, and the mirrors all around the room – behind the bar, in the hall by the bathroom, over some of the seating – all rippled, and a handful of men stepped into the room.

Sara leaned over to Cold. “Can we beat them up now?”

“My dear, I wish you would.”

Sara grinned and dove for one man wielding a taser, and Cold spun to shoot a line of lighting fixtures on the ceiling. The brittle ice broke, and the fixtures crashed to the ground.

Michael and Lincoln tried to run down the stairs to help Sara and Cold, but the crowd of people going up slowed their progress. By the time they made it to the ground, they had gotten separated. Lincoln couldn’t see Michael, but he did see someone approaching Cold from behind. Lincoln grabbed a barstool and hit the assailant just as Cold spun around.

Cold smiled and said, “Your timing is perfect as always, Mi…”

Then he looked over at Lincoln properly, and his glee visibly faded. It was replaced with the closest thing to honesty Lincoln had seen from him, and it was all pain. Just as quickly, it disappeared, and Cold was back. He shouldered past Lincoln to join Sara again.

Sara was face-to-face with Rosa Dillon.

“You’re new,” Rosa cooed. “Let’s see how pretty you look with your brains splattered all over the walls.”

Rosa’s eyes flashed, but Sara quickly closed hers. Then, eyes closed, she drew her favored staff and extended it.

“Uh, what are you doing,” Rosa asked cautiously.

Sara spun her stick around a few times between her hands. “Warming up.” Then, eyes still closed, she charged Rosa, who screamed and ran back towards the bar.

Lincoln punched out another guy and scanned the club for Michael. He saw Scudder grab Dillon and escape through a mirror as Cold-16 knocked out the last thug. Then, across the room, on the other side of the destroyed lighting and décor, he saw Sara grab Michael’s arm and pull him out the back exit along with the last of the club staff. There were still a few patrons in his way, and he couldn’t get over there easily.

Cold-16 shoved at Lincoln’s shoulder and barked, “Come on, time to leave!” 

Disoriented by the fight and the running people, Lincoln followed Cold back up the front stairs.

People poured out of the building, and Lincoln hurried around the side looking for Michael. Instead, he found Cold-16 holding a lit match between two fingers, staring at the flame.

“Do you know, Lincoln Burrows,” Cold asked conversationally, as if this encounter were completely normal, “what Mick Rory wanted from the world?”

Lincoln floundered for a second. He just wanted to find Michael, but this psychotic look-alike brought chaos and confusion everywhere with him. “I don’t know. To eat, drink, and set it on fire?”

“Yes,” Cold said. The flame had almost reached his fingertips. “Exactly. He wanted to make it all burn.” 

Then he flicked the match to the ground, where several bottles of very high proof alcohol had been broken against the wood-paneled wall.

“No!”

The wall immediately blazed to life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's club scene is brought to you by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crdMfAAp20M.
> 
> Yes, I know Michael didn't actually kiss Sara Tancredi until after this point in Prison Break, but the line was too good to pass up.


	10. Fire and Electricity

Lincoln grabbed a double handful of Cold-16’s jacket and pulled him back to the main street. Then he hauled him to a non-burning building and slammed him up against the wall. 

Cold huffed out a laugh as his back hit the brick.

Lincoln didn’t appreciate the humor. “Michael was right, you are completely nuts.”

“I don’t think you can judge, Mick.” Cold slumped a little against the wall.

“Lincoln! And don’t think that because you look like Michael, I won’t kick your ass.”

“Oh, I’m sure little brother’s been on the end of your ass kicking before.”

“Shut up,” Lincoln said, but he was distracted. He could smell the fire just a few dozen feet away. He patted Cold down, looking for a phone. “Do you have a phone? I’m calling 911.” 

“Not one that has a network connection.”

Lincoln found the phone, but Cold was right. There was no signal. He took the cold gun too and wondered if it would put the fire out.

“Relax,” Cold sneered. “The fire department will be here in under four minutes.”

Cold stared at the flames as they grew. They crept over to the corner of the building, and Lincoln could feel the heat of them.

“Don’t worry. They’ll get put down before they hurt anybody.” Cold’s voice was very far away. “Mick?”

“Lin-coln,” Lincoln growled, frustrated.

“Mick.” Cold pointed, almost lazily, at the fire.

Lincoln looked just in time to see Heatwave step out of the alleyway, through the fire blazing around him. His fire jacket was closed around him, his goggles were down over his eyes, and his heat gun came up.

Cold-16 grabbed Lincoln’s shoulders just in time to spin them into a recessed store entrance. The flames of the heat gun roared past them, singeing the back of Cold’s jacket. Lincoln leaned out of the alcove to shoot the cold gun at Heatwave. He was surprised by the lack of kickback and missed wildly, but Heatwave still ducked back into the blazing alley. Lincoln’s hand felt suddenly like a freezing block of ice. No wonder all the Colds wore gloves.

“This don’t need to be difficult, kid,” Heatwave called. “Just send that Snart out, and you and your brother get a head start.”

Lincoln looked over at Cold-16. He expected to see a sneer or hear a demand for his cold gun back. Instead, Cold was just crouched beside him, head cocked as if thinking.

Lincoln had no clue what Cold was thinking or what to do with him. But between Cold-16 and a murderous Heatwave, it was an easy enough choice. He stepped out of the alcove and raised the cold gun. It whirred blue under his hand. He saw Heatwave mirroring his stance a few dozen feet away.

“Wait!” Cold shouted, and he dove for Lincoln.

It turned out that there was exactly one rule to using the cold and heat guns. Lincoln did not know this rule. So when the streams from the two guns crossed, he was wholly unprepared for the backlash. Absolute cold hit absolute hot and exploded in the middle. Lincoln was knocked back into Cold-16, and the two flew into the corner of the alcove behind them, slamming Cold into the wall. There was an ominous cracking sound, and Cold screamed.

Lincoln took too long to get over his disorientation. It was seconds too many that he rolled over for the dropped cold gun. Just as he reached for the gun, a heavily booted foot came down on it. Lincoln looked up to find the muzzle of the heat gun right above him.

“Don’t be a moron for once in your life, kid,” Heatwave said. “We ain’t after you. Just move out of the way, and only Snart’s gotta burn.”

Lincoln was dumbfounded. Only Snart? “And my brother?”

Heatwave nodded once. “We’ll get there.”

Cold-16 groaned in pain beside Lincoln. Lincoln’s fingers tensed against the cold gun he couldn’t grab.

And then yellow lightning rushed past and knocked Heatwave back. Lincoln grabbed the cold gun, but before he even stood, he felt the Flash grab him around the waist and haul him a block away. Michael and Sara were there.

“Thank god, Linc.” Michael hugged his brother around the shoulders.

Another flash, and Cold-16 was dropped into Sara’s waiting arms. He screamed when she touched his shoulders, and she had to help him stand while he breathed through the pain.

“What happened?” Sara asked.

“He got slammed between me and the wall,” Lincoln explained. “He hit the corner. I think he’s hurt pretty bad.”

“Idiot crossed the streams,” Cold said through gritted teeth.

“Well, sorry, I didn’t know we were using Ghostbusters logic here!”

The Flash returned again, this time empty-handed. “Sorry. It looks like Heatwave’s gone. Fire department made it though.”

“How could Heatwave have gotten away so fast?” Michael asked.

In lieu of an answer, the STAR Labs van pulled up, and Sara and Lincoln helped Cold inside.

~

It took 21 minutes of driving and nearly as long of maneuvering Cold-16 through the halls of STAR Labs to get him to the med bay. Cold nearly lost consciousness three times. His left shoulder looked dislocated, and his collarbone was in agony.

Michael, Lincoln, Barry, Sara, and Cisco were just backing out of Caitlin’s way when they heard protests from the hallway, and then Leo stormed in with Ray right behind him, trying to pull his husband back out. “Leo, this isn’t worth it. He’s injured.”

“Of course it’s worth it, Ray. You are worth it. You,” Leo rounded on Cold-16, fury etched across his face, “I get that your Mick died, but I don’t care. Half of our Mick’s did. I don’t care that Barry didn’t love you back, or whatever your damage is. Get your shit together. Because if you ever risk my husband like that again, so help me God, Killer Cold won’t get a second chance at you. Do you understand?”

Dumbfounded, Cold-16 opened his mouth silently.

“Do you?!”

“Yes, God, yes, I understand.”

Leo took a deep breath to steady himself. Much more calmly, he said, “Good,” then spun on his heel and left.

Ray gave a sympathetic grimace and then left too.

Barry let out a breath. “Oh my gosh, I’ve never seen him angry before. That was scary.”

~

Dislocated shoulder. Broken collarbone. Four cracked ribs. Dr. Snow said Cold-16 was lucky to have avoided serious internal bleeding.

Everyone was somber the next morning after Cold’s injury. Dr. Snow had him stabilized in the medical bay, but he would be confined to the med bay for a while. 

Lincoln stormed into the breakfast room and grabbed Leo’s white marker out of his hands.

“Hey, grabby much?” Leo protested.

“We’ve had this wrong the whole time,” Lincoln stated. He didn’t actually need to write anything down, but having the marker seemed to make people pay attention to him. 

“What have we had wrong, Lincoln?” Michael asked.

“This was never about killing Cold and Heatwave’s doppelgangers. It was only about Cold. The other Heatwaves that died – they were just in the way. Cold’s only targets are his own doppelgangers.”

“What makes you say that?” Barry asked.

“He told me. Heatwave. He had me dead to rights, but he let me go. He literally said that he only wanted my brother and ‘the other Snart’.”

“That still leaves the questions of how and why and, more importantly, how do we stop him?” Cold-4 said.

“No,” Leo stood up, “that’s important. If it’s just Killer Cold going after other versions of himself, then it’s not a part of some greater strategy. It’s personal. This is a vendetta. Against himself.”

“Why would he do that?” Barry asked.

It was quiet for a few seconds, uncomfortable. Then Mayor Snart said, “Which one of us wants to start that list?” His voice was quiet, but his tone was harsh. None of the Snart doppelgangers looked at each other or responded.

Scofield-30 stood and left the room.

“Why would Heatwave help him?” Micky-27 finally asked. “I’ll admit that I’ve followed Len into some pretty crazy messes – like right now – but I wouldn’t help him commit really indirect suicide. Not even when I wanted to kill him myself.”

One table over, Len-27 scoffed softly, and Michael couldn’t tell if it was mocking or fond.

“Maybe…” Michael said, “maybe he is willing to accept the collateral if he thinks it will bring his brother back to him in the end.”

It was quiet again. Eventually Leo took his marker back from Lincoln and said, “We also might all be projecting onto this a bit. Most of us have been up all night. I suggest we all get some sleep. It has been a very long day.”

~

Scofield-30 wandered blindly through some rooms for a while. He wasn’t sure how long. Once he started to pay attention, he realized he was in a lab. There were unidentifiable gadgets scattered over every table top and equations written on several of those clear dry erase boards.

He began to absently fiddle with some of the creations. He couldn’t tell what any of them did, and it wasn’t just because he was unfamiliar with the engineering. He could barely see through the haze in his mind or feel through the void in his chest.

Lincoln was dead. He didn’t need to be. Michael from the other Earth had actually gone through with that crazy rescue plan that Scofield had considered for a second, and his brother was alive for it. Lincoln was dead, he was innocent and electrocuted in a chair, and it was all Scofield’s fault.

Then his hand landed on something round and multi-faceted, and it gave him a sharp shock through his hand. The jolt, the pain, cleared his mind for a second, and he blinked in surprise. He stared at it.

It had electrocuted him. It had hurt. But he felt it. He felt it more than the weight in his lungs that normally made it hard to breathe.

He put his hand back, and it shocked him again. Again, it hurt, sent a burn up his arm and through his heart, behind his eyes. Just for a second. His legs weakened, and he leaned against the table. For a second, the haze and the void went away.

He put his hand back, and this time, he didn’t let go when the pain started.

~

As everyone stood to go to their respective sleeping areas, Michael saw Leonard-19 lean over and whisper something to Mick-19. Mick nodded and yelled at Cisco, “If I ain’t a target, then I’m gonna need to go home.”

“Okay,” Cisco agreed while he tapped something on his tablet.

Mick-19 walked towards him.

“Oh, you mean right now,” Cisco startled.

“Right now,” Mick confirmed.

“Oh, okay, just give… me… a… second.” Cisco fumbled with his tablet while he tried to pull his Vibe glasses out of his pocket. Once he got them on, he opened a breach to Earth-19, and Mick walked through without comment. “Okay then. Uh… anyone else?”

There were some murmurs around the room, and then Len-27 started, “Mickey, it might be better -.”

“One more word, and I’ll punch you,” Mickey-27 said from his table. The two didn’t look at each other, but Michael thought it was the most he had heard them say to each other since they all got here.

Len-27 was right, though. There was no reason for Lincoln to stick around and risk his life. He should be with LJ and Veronica. Michael sucked in a breath to say as much.

Lincoln held up a finger to interrupt before Michael even spoke. “What he said.”

“But -.”

Lincoln held a fist up in warning. Michael pointedly pursed his lips shut but couldn’t help but smile.

Then an alert went off on Cisco’s tablet. “Huh,” Cisco muttered. “’Kay, good talk everyone. See you in the morning.”

~

Cisco ran into his lab as quickly as he could once he got an alert on his tablet that something in his lab had been messed with. There was an electrical surge. What he found was Scofield collapsed against his work table, clutching the thinking cap in both hands.

“God, put that down! It’s live!” He ran to the electrical circuit where it was plugged in, recharging, and shut the whole unit off. 

With a sharp cry, Scofield crumpled to the ground. Cisco knelt beside him and pulled the dead thinking cap away from him. He had electrical burns on his hands. Cisco pulled out his cell phone and called Caitlin. “Caitlin, I need you in my lab. Scofield’s hurt.” Then he dropped both phone and tablet and tried to help Scofield into a seated position. “Come on, up you get, man.”

Scofield whimpered and tried to evade Cisco’s hands. “No, just leave. Just leave.”

“Sorry man, no can do. Just let me see your hands, okay?” Cisco touched Scofield’s wrists, and his vision suddenly flickered in and out.

_He was standing on asphalt. It stretched out in every direction as far as he could see. The sky was steel gray and the lighting dim. There was nothing._

_And then there was Killer Cold. He was there, kneeling on the asphalt. His right arm was encased in ice, and the frost crept up onto his neck and chest. Barry was there, lying at Cold’s knees in his old Flash costume. His cowl was pushed down, and he was very clearly dead. “I’m sorry, Barry,” Cold muttered, staring off into the distance._

_His vision flickered again, and now Cisco was seeing himself there too. He knelt opposite Cold, hunched over Barry’s body. “What did you expect from a killer, Barry?”_

_“I’m sorry, Cisco,” Cold whispered. “I’ll fix this. I’ll fix it so I can never hurt Barry again.”_

_The other Cisco looked up, not at Cold, but right at Cisco. “You shouldn’t be here.”_

_Then he blasted Cisco with his hands,_ and back in the lab, Cisco was thrown back into the legs of his worktable.

Panting, he came back to himself and saw Caitlin hovering over him. “Cisco, are you alright? What did you see?”

Cisco tried to even his breathing, but it was hard to do when Scofield was freaking out a few feet away from him. 

Michael and Lincoln were there too. Lincoln reached for his little brother’s doppelganger, who was sobbing and crying, “I’m sorry Lincoln. I’m sorry Barry,” over and over again. Once Lincoln touched his arm, Scofield flinched back and shouted, “Don’t touch me!”

“Okay, okay, Mikey. It’s okay,” Lincoln tried to soothe him.

“No, it’s not,” Michael said. “And we’re not helping. Come on, we need to leave.” He grabbed his brother’s shoulders. “Come on, Lincoln.”

Lincoln let Michael guide him away so that Caitlin could inject Scofield with a sedative. Instead, the brothers helped Cisco up and, at Caitlin’s directions, went to the infirmary to get a gurney.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You would think that being isolated at home and unemployed would mean I have lots of time to write. But a bored child at home all the time kills motivation.


	11. Biding Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leo and Ray's board: 
> 
> 1 – Team Flash & Legends, Mick-1 & Palmer  
2 – Mayor Snart, clearly the most crooked here  
4 – Cold-4, retired  
11 – Killer Cold & Heatwave, bad guys  
16 – Cold-16 & Sara-16, thieves  
19 – Leonard-19 & Mick-19, smugglers  
22 – Snart-22 & Rory-22, cyborg survivors  
27 – Len-27 & Mickey-27, freedom fighters  
29 – Michael-29, Lincoln, Veronica, & LJ, criminals but the good guys?  
30 – Scofield-30, structural engineer  
53 – Leo & Ray, 4-ever

The next day (actually, much later in the same day), it was Cold-4 that stood at the board in the cafeteria. Everyone was still eating breakfast (lunch), though they were much more subdued than earlier that morning. Many of their group had scattered to other parts of the labs, but no one had left the compound this time.

“I had a thought last night,” Cold-4 said. “The first time Mick and I broke out of maximum security, there was a big country-wide manhunt for us. It was headed up by this fed named Mahone. Now Mahone was smart. Really smart. And dogged. It took everything I had to stay half a step ahead of him. I was pretty used to being on alert by then, looking for cops and snitches. But I have never had to run like that before or since. And I never made any progress against him until I turned around and stopped running. I went on the offensive, and suddenly the chase went very differently.”

“You’re saying we need to start hunting Killer Cold instead of waiting for him to hunt us,” Len-27 said.

“Exactly.”

“But how?” Mickey-27 asked. “We still don’t know how to find him. We don’t even know how he’s been finding us.”

“Actually, I figured that out last night too,” Cisco joined the conversation. He looked tired, and Michael didn’t think he had slept at all since his interaction with Scofield earlier. “He’s got me with him. Vibe-11.”

~

Cisco was in the cortex, avoiding all the Snarts and Rorys and difficult thoughts, when his cell phone rang. It was Joe, of all people.

“Hey Joe.”

_“Hi Cisco. Look, the department just got a 911 call about some Cold and Heatwave cosplayers shoving someone tied up into the back of an SUV. Said the guy looked Hispanic and had long dark hair.”_

Cisco sat up straighter in the his seat. “That might be the real Killer Cold with 11-me!”

_“Which is why I offered to go check it out. But I’d rather have back up just in case. Can you send Leo and Ray to meet me?”_

“Where’s Barry?”

_“Doing his actual job, Cisco.”_

“Right, right. Yeah. Send me the address.”

~

Just a few minutes later, Ray landed quietly at the address Joe gave them. Leo had his arms wrapped around his husband’s shoulders and was standing on his foot. Joe tried not to laugh as Leo dismounted with as much dignity as possible.

“Graceful,” Joe chuckled.

Ever the professional, Leo ignored him and asked, “Where’s the vehicle in question?”

Unperturbed, Joe nodded behind him. “Half a block that way.”

Ray tried to not laugh at Joe’s amusement at Leo’s expense, so he just calmly followed the two. Joe led them to a carpark behind a few businesses. They stopped at the entrance to look around. The SUV in question was the only one there.

“Plate matches what the caller gave us,” Joe whispered.

“I don’t see any movement inside,” Ray offered.

“Hm,” Leo contributed.

None of the three men moved to approach the vehicle.

“So, this feels like a trap,” Joe said.

“It does seem pretty trap-like,” Ray agreed. “I see three points they could attack from once we move toward the car.”

“Hm,” Leo said again. Then he moved towards the car anyway.

“Leo!” Ray hissed.

But nothing happened. Leo threw open the driver’s door, which wasn’t even locked. No one shot at him. The car didn’t explode. He wasn’t enveloped in some elaborate ice trap. The only things inside were a bunch of take-out wrappers.

Joe shrugged at Ray, and the two followed suit. They examined the outside of the SUV, but it wasn’t until Joe opened the rear door that they found anything.

There was a worn mattress laid out in the back along with a few blankets, a bunch of papers, and a single tablet. Joe immediately recognized it as one of the STAR Labs tablets.

Leo had to crouch down in order to crawl into the back of the SUV. He poked around and handed Joe a few sheets of paper he found.

Joe looked them over. Several were detailed maps of STAR Labs, hand-drawn. Another was a compound that Joe didn’t recognize.

“That’s the meeting hall where Killer Cold attacked us on Earth-X,” Ray said. He pointed out the room where it had happened.

They found another that was a quick sketch of the street where Killer Cold and Heatwave attacked Michael and Lincoln in Washington DC on Earth-29. There were many others that weren’t so easily recognizable.

“They found everyone the same way we did,” Joe said. He shuffled some of the papers around until a photo slipped out. It was Barry, Caitlin, and Cisco standing around Dr. Wells – Eobard Thawne – in his wheelchair. Everyone was smiling. Joe didn’t recognize the exact photo, but they had plenty of similar ones at home. “They used Cisco to track the doppelgangers and vibe where they would be. But Cisco can breach anywhere. How could Killer Cold and Heatwave contain him and make him work for them?”

“I don’t think they did,” Leo said from inside. He pulled a fold of red fabric out from under the mattress and held it up. It was the upper half of the original Flash suit. It had two long, dark tears burned across the front. “I think he’s trying to save Barry.”

Leo hopped out of the car. “This isn’t a trap for us,” he said. “This is to pull resources away from the Labs. Ray. Get to STAR Labs. We’ll catch up.”

Ray nodded and shot into the sky, glowing and leaving a golden trail. 

Joe quickly pulled out his cell phone and called Cisco. “Cisco. Call Barry and get him to STAR. You’re about to be attacked.”

_“Joe, Barry left three minutes ago. There’s a huge fire at the docks.”_

From his vantage point in the sky, Ray saw the smoke and the sirens headed for the river. “Oh no.” He bolted for STAR Labs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're in the home stretch here. Sorry my motivation has been so low.


	12. Facing Cold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For reference:  
1 – Team Flash & Legends, Mick-1 & Palmer  
2 – Mayor Snart, clearly the most crooked here  
4 – Cold-4, retired  
11 – Killer Cold & Heatwave, bad guys  
16 – Cold-16 & Sara-16, thieves  
19 – Leonard-19 & Mick-19, smugglers  
22 – Snart-22 & Rory-22, cyborg survivors  
27 – Len-27 & Mickey-27, freedom fighters  
29 – Michael-29, Lincoln, Veronica, & LJ, criminals but the good guys?  
30 – Scofield-30, structural engineer  
53 – Leo & Ray, 4-ever

He knew it was a trap. It could only be a trap. Three warehouses going up in flames nearly simultaneously and dangerously close to an apartment building had to be the work of Heatwave. 

He knew it was a trap. What could Barry do but go anyway?

Barry spun his arms in an effort to suffocate the flames near an interior office while the two workers inside waited for their chance to bolt.

“Cisco," Barry called into his comms. “This fire is everywhere. I don’t think I can get it out quickly. Not alone.”

Then a shot of blue streaked past Barry and froze the burning beams next to him.

“Cold?”

~

Heatwave stood beside Cisco as the kid genius tapped violently at the computer. His eyes were manic but focused. Cisco was usually spaced out and disoriented, but he was lucid right now in a way Mick had only seen a few times, when they were steps away from killing another doppelganger. Snart’s doppelganger. 

Killing Snart.

“You sure you can actually do what you’re trying to do from here?” Mick asked. “This office don’t look used much.”

“Don’t you know Rory? Computers are magic.” Cisco clicked one more series of keys and smiled. “And I’m a frickin’ wizard.” Then his hand shot out and opened a breach a few feet away. “Go. I’ll catch up.”

Mick went.

~

Mayor Snart leaned against the railing of the stairway landing above the cafeteria. He looked down at Cold-4, Michael, and Lincoln, the only ones left in here after lunch. Cold-4 and Michael were trying to discuss the science behind the cold gun, but they were agitated. Lincoln was trying to eat cold pancakes to calm himself down, but it didn’t look like he was having much luck.

Then he saw movement outside the room, on the other side of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the cafeteria. It was Killer Cold. He was walking across the concrete, headed straight for them.

Mayor Snart pointed from his vantage point over the cafeteria and shouted, “Cold!”

Cold-4, Michael, and Lincoln tracked his finger to Killer Cold outside. A breach opened, and Heatwave stepped out next to him.

“Get upstairs!” Cold-4 shouted at Michael and Lincoln, gesturing them up towards Mayor Snart.

_“Facility-wide lockdown engaged,”_ a passive, computer voice alerted over the PA system.

Mayor Snart immediately bolted for the door on his left that led into the main halls of STAR Labs. He darted into the hall just before the door automatically slammed closed and locked.

“Shit,” Lincoln shouted. He and Michael were barely even to the base of the stairs.

“He’s got us cut off from each other,” Michael said.

Cold-4 looked back to Killer Cold and Heatwave as they approached one of the windows. It was just the three of them down here, and he was the only one armed. 

Killer Cold stepped up to the window and pressed his cool hand against the glass. Frost immediately started to form fractals across it.

“Definitely shit,” Cold-4 said.

Killer Cold fired.

~

“Why won’t this door open?!” Mick-1 shouted. He was trying to force open the doors of the cortex to get to the hallway.

“Sorry, Mick, we’re trying,” Palmer said. He and Cisco were frantically typing on the computers, trying to get the lockdown lifted.

“Whoever initiated the lockdown blocked all my override codes,” Cisco explained. “Which means it was probably me. Other me.”

“Can’t you use your fancy black hole powers to get us out of here?” Mick growled at Cisco.

“Yes, but everyone else would still be trapped and isolated. Caitlin’s with the 16s in the med bay, and I don’t even know where everyone else is. At least here we have a decent chance of finding out where Killer Cold is going to attack.”

“Uh,” Palmer pointed at a blinking computer. “I think we just did.”

Cisco looked over Palmer’s shoulder. “The cafeteria.”

~

Cold-4 ducked and rolled away from dual ice and fire rays. He fired back at Heatwave, who spun behind some rubble to avoid another collision between his heat gun and a cold gun.

Fortunately, Cold-4 had managed to pull the fight outside. This meant that Michael and Lincoln, who were young, unarmed, and wholly unprepared for a supervillain fight, could move away from the shooting.

“Get out of here!” Cold-4 shouted at them and jerked his head towards the industrial district near STAR Labs. There were docks, shipping containers, alleys, and any number of buildings for them to hide in.

“But –“ Michael, the do-gooder, started to object, but his more sensible brother grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him towards the relative safety of the other buildings.

At least they were two fewer things to worry about. 

Killer Cold shot at Cold-4, who ducked further behind the cover of a large tree in the grassy area outside the Labs. The blast grazed his side, but the thermal threading in his vest took the brunt of it.

Unfortunately, being outside meant that Killer Cold and Heatwave had the space to split up and approach Cold-4 from both sides. He could see Killer Cold in the reflection off a nearby car window and Heatwave along the walls of STAR Labs. That wasn’t good. If he died here, Sara was never going to let him hear the end of it.

Then there was the high whine of a cold gun and the metallic shrieking of twisting metal. Cold-4 looked up in time to see a frozen part of one of the metal spires atop STAR Labs break off and crash to the ground. Heatwave had to run to avoid being crushed.

“I get you, Mick?!” Leonard-19 shouted down. He had been on the roof of the Labs enjoying a couple beers and a quiet minute when the lockdown happened. Now he couldn’t get down, and the ground was well out of range of his cold gun. He had to improvise by freezing and knocking down bits of the roof. Luckily, there were many expendable bits to choose from.

“Not quite, Snart,” Heatwave shouted back up.

“Mick, go after the kid!” Killer Cold shouted at Heatwave. “I’ll handle these two.” 

Heatwave shrugged vaguely in the direction of Cold-4 and took off for the industrial district.

~

“There!” Michael shouted and pointed at a side entrance to an industrial complex that had a gated fence.

“Right.” Lincoln ran for it with Michael right behind him. “We’ll lock it behind us.” Lincoln glanced back briefly to make sure Michael had the gate then ran ahead to make sure it was clear. He heard the chain slide around the post and, with a drop in his stomach, the padlock click shut.

He already knew what he was going to see.

Lincoln turned. Michael was on the wrong side of the fence, making sure the padlock was locked tight.

“No.” Lincoln ran back to the fence, but it was too late. Michael kept his head down, too ashamed to look Lincoln in the eye. “No no no no, Michael. Michael, don’t do this.”

“It’s done, Lincoln.” Michael finally looked up at his brother. Lincoln clutched at the chain link between them, separating them once again. “Get out of here. Heatwave will chase me.”

Michael reached his fingers through the chain link to grip Lincoln’s as best he could. It broke Lincoln’s heart to be in this position again, on the wrong side of a locked gate from a loved one and a death sentence between them.

“I love you, Lincoln,” Michael said. “Keep Veronica and LJ safe.”

Then Michael yanked his hands away from the fence and ran further into the industrial park.

“Michael!” Lincoln shouted after him. “Michael!”

Seconds later, Heatwave caught up to Lincoln, drawn by his shouting. He looked at Lincoln locked on the other side of the gate and shouldered his heat gun.

“Yer brother do that to ya?” Heatwave asked, gesturing toward the padlock.

Lincoln just glowered.

Heatwave nodded. “That’s a good kid. You did right by him.”

Lincoln growled, “If you touch him, I’ll kill you.”

Heatwave shrugged and headed out after Michael.

“You hear me?” Lincoln shouted after his doppelganger and banged on the gate. “I’ll kill you!”

~

Leonard-19 kicked frozen rubble off the roof in Killer Cold’s general direction, but Killer Cold easily rolled out of the way. It at least bought Cold-4 enough time to reposition to a more defensible spot in the parking lot.

Annoyed, Killer Cold shot a massive blast of blue plasma up at the roof, and he had much better range than Leonard-19’s cold gun. The blast struck the edge of the roof and froze into huge spikes of ice. The force of it threw Leonard-19 back and knocked the wind out of him. He raggedly huffed in some air and wobbled to his feet. The ice had formed a jagged wall taller than him. 

“Dammit,” he whispered. He ran around it to the next clear patch of roof ledge, but the angle was bad. He could barely make out movement in the direction of Killer Cold and Cold-4. He was out of the fight.

~

On the ground in front of the Labs, Cold-4’s position was growing desperate. They had once again seriously underestimated the scale of Killer Cold’s power. The car in front of him froze, hard and brittle, and then shattered. Now completely exposed, Cold-4 shot Killer Cold directly in the chest with his cold gun. 

Once the beam stopped, Killer Cold looked down at his chest. He was completely unharmed, only frost left across his shirt to show Cold-4’s work.

“Yeah, I suppose it was too much to ask for that to work,” Cold-4 griped at his murderous doppelganger.

“It really was,” Killer Cold agreed. He raised his right arm and pointed at Cold-4.

Then bullets and what could only be shots from a ray gun rained down on Killer Cold from his left. Ice immediately formed across his shoulders to form a type of shield from the bullets, but one of the rays hit his left arm just above the elbow. He shouted in pain and clamped his right hand over the burn. It hissed into steam.

Killer Cold looked left and found Snart-22 pointing his dual pistols at him from across the parking lot. Rory-22 stood next to him holding a paper grocery bag in one hand and a highly processed, sugar-packed Danish in the other. They had not been in the Labs at all but grocery shopping when Killer Cold attacked. The word ‘shopping’ being used loosely.

Rory munched his treat, and Snart shot both guns at Killer Cold again. Killer Cold, now prepared, formed an ice shield and deflected both shots.

Cold-4 decided he was useless here and took the opportunity to run after Michael and Lincoln. They needed his help much more than the cyborgs of Earth-22. Killer Cold paid him no mind.

Snart-22 was not Captain Cold. He wasn’t Citizen Cold. He was not, in fact, a Cold of any kind. He was just Leonard Snart, a violent, dangerous survivor of the hellhole that was Earth-22. He had his wits, his guns, and his friend, and that had always been enough.

Rory-22, however, _was_ Heatwave. He carried no guns but instead had a tiny, red rock wired into his chest, just over his sternum.

“Are you going to burn something now?” Snart-22 asked flatly.

“I think I will,” Rory-22 answered. He (tragically) dropped both bag and Danish and stretched his scarred arms out to crack his knuckles.

Then his tapped the red stone on his bare chest. It glowed. Then his bones beneath his skin glowed as if lit up with an internal fire.

“What the…?” Killer Cold muttered. 

He didn’t have a chance to say anything else before Rory shot a fireball at him with his bare hands. The force of it exploded Killer Cold’s shield of ice and sent him sprawling back onto the asphalt. Snart-22 tried to shoot Killer Cold while he was down, but Killer Cold quickly rolled out of the way and on to his feet. He shot tiny spears of ice from his finger tips at Snart, who dodged out of the way into the grassy park nearby.

Flames surrounded Rory. They grew in every direction and formed into a humanoid shape around Rory, making him seem far larger than he was. The liquid in some of the tubes of Rory’s cybernetics bubbled, and the asphalt melted at his feet.

Snart-22 got his footing and fired again at Killer Cold, but he waved his right hand and formed a wall of ice around him on that side. Then Killer Cold shot raw blue cold energy at Rory. Rory fired back, and the two energy blasts struck. Instead of exploding on each other, the fire overwhelmed the cold and pushed it back towards Killer Cold in a burst of hot steam.

Rory-22 pressed his advantage and marched forward, beam of fire ahead of him, footprints of black slag behind him. Killer Cold braced his feet and tried to hold the stream of cold, but the cold core in his arm was no match for the power of the Zambesi fire totem in Rory’s chest. He slid against the ground at his feet until his back hit the wall of STAR Labs behind him.

The wall of ice protecting Killer Cold from Snart-22’s guns was rapidly steaming and melting beside him. Snart-22 pointed his pistol at the wall in anticipation for a clear shot.

“Almost got him, Mick,” Snart-22 yelled at his partner. “Keep it up!”

Then there was an undignified “whoop”, and Rory fell through a breach that opened under his feet.

“Mick?” Snart-22 startled. He scanned around to find him and instead found Cisco standing on the other end of the grassy landscaping. It wasn’t Cisco of Earth-1. This Cisco was a mess of knotted hair and rumpled clothes. It was Vibe of Earth-11. 

Vibe pointed up, and Snart followed his gesture. He looked up just in time to see Rory fall out of a closing breach hundreds of feet in the air. The wind and speed of his fall quickly extinguished the flames around him.

“Mick!” Snart-22 shouted. 

He had little time to check on his partner, though. Abruptly free from flames and steam, Killer Cold shot ice after him, and Snart-22 had to run to stay clear.

“You got him?” Killer Cold yelled to Vibe.

“Oh yeah,” Vibe responded.

In the air, Rory-22 tried to twist around and get his hands beneath him. He shot fire from his hands in an effort to control his fall, but it took several tries to get himself steady. Then he was able to get his feet pointed down and shoot fire from them too. Finally, he started to slow down.

Vibe shook his head and opened another breach underneath Rory, who couldn’t help but fall in. Vibe dropped him from further up, this time at an angle so that Rory had to correct his trajectory again. Vibe opened breach after breach, faster and faster, to catch and drop Rory, always higher and at a sharper angle, spinning and disorienting him.

The human body can naturally withstand between four and six times the force of gravity before passing out. Rory was more resilient than most. He lasted until nearly seven. But then his fire went out, and he dropped like a stone.

The car park and grassy courtyard between the Labs and the offices nearby were a mess of bullet holes and ice patches. Snart saw his friend fall, and shouted, “Mick. Mick, wake up!” 

His momentary distraction was his undoing, though. Killer Cold shot him straight in the chest. Ice bloomed over him and froze him in a giant block of ice, gaze still directed upward.

“One down,” Killer Cold gloated.

Suddenly, a bright gold light torpedoed through the air. It was Ray on a direct course for Rory’s falling form. He grabbed Rory around the waist, but he was going much too fast, and Rory was much too heavy. Unable to dodge around, Ray flew straight into a new breach and came out into the side of a skyscraper across town. The two launched through a wall of steel and glass, and the people inside screamed in surprise. The pair tumbled, unconscious, to a stop inside.

~

On the street level, Leo and Joe were stuck a few blocks away from STAR Labs. Crowds of people were screaming and fleeing the buildings near the fighting, blocking the street. Leo and Joe gave up on driving and exited the car, but they were still trying to go the opposite direction of the scared crowd.

“Excuse us, please, here we go,” Leo tried to push his way passed the running pedestrians. 

“Police!” Joe shouted. “Everyone out of the way!”

That did little to calm the group and nothing to make them move.

So Leo shot his gun at a nearby streetlight. It froze, and the light shattered.

“Everyone, get the hell out of the way!”

They did.

~

In the cortex, Cisco gave a triumphant shout. “Yes! Lockdown lifted.” He immediately hit a button on his computer to activate the Lab-wide PA system.

“Anyone still in the building, get to the pipeline,” Cisco shouted into the PA’s microphone. “It’s safer there.”

Then he turned to Mick-1 and Ray Palmer. “Ray, man the comms. Heatwave, get to Caitlin in the med bay. She might need some help.”

“But – ,” Palmer started to object.

“You heard ‘im, Haircut.” Surprisingly, Mick quickly did as he was told and ran down the hall towards the med bay.

Palmer sat in Cisco’s vacated chair and put in an earpiece. Cisco grabbed his gauntlets and visor and breached outside.

~

At Cisco’s announcement, Sara-16 tore the med bay door open, just in case it tried to lock them in again. She pulled out her sticks and looked around the hallway. “We’re clear, let’s go.”

Caitlin tried to help Cold-16 out of bed but was pushed away. 

“My legs work fine, Snow,” Cold-16 objected. His left arm was in a sling, and there were bandages wrapped around his torso. He grabbed his cold gun and followed after Sara.

~

Outside, Killer Cold and Vibe-11 were out of immediate targets. Heatwave was chasing after Michael and Lincoln around some nearby warehouses, and Cold-4 had gone after them. Rory-22 and The Ray were unconscious somewhere downtown. Barry was busy, Leonard-19 was trapped on the roof, and Snart-22 was a block of ice.

“Inside then,” Killer Cold said.

“Not yet,” Vibe held up a hand. 

A breach opened, and Cisco-1 hopped out.

“Just you, Cisco?” Killer Cold asked.

“Yeah, I was really hoping there were others already out here.” Cisco-1 looked at the destruction around him and Snart frozen like a giant popsicle. He hoped that didn’t shatter during their fight. He waved at Vibe-11. “Hey evil me.”

“The stars are ringing, singing, screaming, and I hear them all.”

“Not this again.”

“Somebody has to go polish the stars, and I am not afraid of what I am.”

“Right… so you’ve gone for the full-on crazy pants option, then. That’s – that’s great.”

Suddenly, Cisco-1 had to duck and roll away from a stream of cold.

“I missed on purpose, Cisco,” Killer Cold said. “It would be best if you survived this, but I will go through you if I have to. Are you really willing to die alone here for those killers and monsters in there?”

Cisco shifted his weight, ready to dodge or breach if he needed to. 

“Yeah, I really wish I was an even slightly worse person so I could say no, but here I am.”

“He’s not alone,” Vibe-11 said flatly.

In a flash of yellow lightning, Barry ran to his friend’s side.

“You heard him, Killer Cold,” Barry said. “He’s not alone.”

Killer Cold raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I’ll admit I expected the fire to take you at least a few more minutes. How’d you get here so fast?”

“I had backup.”

~

Mickey-27 shot at the blaze moving towards him and the people he was evacuating.

“Come on, this way, let’s move it!” Mickey-27 yelled as he herded them towards an exit.

Len-27 held a frozen door open for the civilians while keeping an eye on the nearest flames. One of the evacuees lost his footing and took a second to fix his shoe. “No, please, take your time. It’s only a fire. No pressure.”

~

Cold-4 found Lincoln apparently lost in the maze of industrial buildings and factories.

“Cold!” Lincoln shouted at him. “You have to help me find Michael. He left me behind, and now Heatwave’s after him.”

“Okay, this way,” Cold-4 said. 

He led Lincoln back the way he came. They reemerged near STAR Labs, but the fight had moved away from them and towards a small park near the river.

“This isn’t where Michael is, Cold. We have to go help him.”

“Lincoln, listen to me. Michael is smart; he’ll find a way to ditch Mick and get back here.”

“You don’t get it at all, do you? That is my baby brother trapped in there with a psycho killer.”

“And do you know where he is, Lincoln? Because I don’t. But we have friends down there right now that need our help. So come on.”

~

Michael knew what he needed to do. He just needed a couple minutes to do it. The warehouse he was in was large, more of an entire complex or network of buildings. The HVAC system was exposed along the ceiling and walls. It was gas heated. He could work with that.

First, he found a more enclosed corner of the building.

“Where ya hidin’ young, fake Snart?” Heatwave shouted from somewhere else in the complex. The echoes made it impossible to guess how far away he was.

Second, Michael used a crowbar lying around to break open a gas pipe. There was no way Heatwave wouldn’t hear that.

“Just hold tight, and this’ll be over a lot faster.”

Third, he increased the pressure of the gas until it exited the broken pipe with a soft hiss. Then he waited.

He didn’t have to wait long. Heatwave turned a corner and leveled his gun at Michael.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Mick. You smell that? That’s propane. It’s filling the room, and if you fire that gun - .”

Heatwave fired his gun.

The explosion threw Michael back into a wall, knocking the wind out of him. But the gas in the air cleared quickly.

Heatwave strode through the few remaining flames. 

“I’m an arsonist, idiot. You really think I can’t tell the difference between propane and natural gas? Plus it takes more’n a couple minutes to fill a room this size.”

Michael gasped air back into his lungs. “It was worth a shot.”

Heatwave stepped right up to him. He pulled his goggles down around his neck.

“Smart ass kid with your smart ass mouth. Always getting into trouble.”

Michael did get into trouble a lot. He usually didn’t mean to. He stole food a few times as a kid when his foster parents rationed snacks. He smoked a grand total of one time outside the school weight room with that idiot Terry Jace just so he could feel like a normal teenager. He lied about where he’d been when he snuck out to see Lincoln. But mostly he lied to Lincoln. About the snacks and the cigarettes and the sneaking out. Lincoln never bought it, called him a smart ass, and gave him a black eye to remind him not to do it again.

In that moment, Heatwave seemed so much like his brother that it broke his heart.

“But usually I had you to get me out of it.”

Heatwave steeled his jaw and tightened his grip on his gun.

And in that moment, Michael looked so much like Snart – 14 years old and bleeding on the concrete floor in juvie – that it broke his heart that he had long ago learned to ignore.

~

With Barry keeping Killer Cold busy, Cisco-1 tried to fight against his murderous doppelganger. But it wasn’t a fair fight by any means. Vibe-11 seemed to be so much stronger than Cisco. It wasn’t even like Cisco’s first fight with Gypsy. His vibrational blasts were constantly interrupted or overwhelmed by those of Vibe-11. Vibe always seemed to know exactly where Cisco was going to breach to before he even got there. It was almost like he could - .

“See the future?” Vibe finished Cisco’s thought. Cisco had taken another blast to the chest and was knocked on his back. His mad look-alike loomed over him. “I can see everything, you know. You can too. But you don’t. You’re too scared to try. Too scared of yourself, your power, and what parts of yourself you might lose if you ever actually tried.”

Vibe blasted Cisco with both hands, and Cisco was thrown across the ground.

“But you won’t be able to protect him with half-measures. You won’t be able to protect anyone.” Vibe stalked closer to Cisco. “So I have to do it for you.”

Cisco stormed to his feet and shot a vibrational blast at his doppelganger, but Vibe opened a breach right in front of him and sucked it up.

Not far away, Barry ran out of the way of another one of Killer Cold’s bursts of ice. He ran up the side of STAR Labs and just cleared the roof when he spotted Leonard-19 holding his hand out. Barry grabbed it and pulled Leonard close to him to run back down with him. 

But the trip back down didn’t go according to plan. Vibe’s breach opened up beside him, and Cisco’s redirected blast hit him in the side. Barry and Leonard-19 fell the four remaining stories and hit the ground.

“Barry!” Cisco shouted.

“He’ll be fine.” Vibe-11 kept himself between Cisco and his friend. “But Cold won’t.” To Killer Cold, he shouted. “Kill him, Cold. That one’s even worse than the others. He _loves_ Barry. You know that will get him killed so much faster than hate. Kill him!”

Killer Cold advanced on the fallen two.

“Leonard,” Barry groaned. He looked at Killer Cold. Leonard-19 had thankfully fallen on top of him, and Barry tried to roll the semi-conscious man off of him, to put himself between Killer Cold and Leonard-19. Leonard did his best to shift off Barry and let him up.

Barry painfully got to his feet. “Leonard,” he pleaded, “you don’t need to do this. You don’t need to protect me, and you don’t need to kill them. Please, just stop this.”

“No Barry,” Vibe spoke for them both. “The multiverse is better off without Leonard Snart. _You_ are better off without Leonard Snart.”

He nodded to Killer Cold and steadied one hand at Barry while keeping the other on Cisco. Killer Cold leveled his hand at Leonard-19, still on the ground behind Barry. The circuits and blood vessels in his arm glowed blue in preparation to fire as soon as Vibe cleared Barry out of the way.

“I’m sorry Barry.”

But then Heatwave’s heavy hand landed on Killer Cold’s left shoulder.

“Mick?” Killer Cold asked.

“It’s taken care of, Snart.”

“Then go for one of the others inside.”

“Nah, kid. I never should have let it get this far.”

Heatwave stepped up right behind Killer Cold and wrapped his left arm around his partner’s shoulders.

Cold’s eyes widened. “Mick?”

“I’m sorry kid.” Heatwave pressed the muzzle of his gun up against the back of his friend’s ribs and fired.

The resulting blast from the absolute heat hitting Killer Cold’s freezing body knocked everyone off their feet, and the ice and glass from nearby buildings shattered. Cold was thrown forward, and he rolled several times before he finally stopped dozens of feet from where he started. Heatwave was sprawled on his back.

Lincoln was one of the first to recover. “Michael? Michael!” Heatwave had said that he got the kid. But Michael couldn’t, he couldn’t leave him.

“Lincoln!” Michael shouted and ran from around the side of the building. Lincoln heaved a sigh of relief but was surprised when Michael ran not to him but to Heatwave.

Michael skidded on the rubble around Heatwave when he tried to kneel down beside him. “Mick? Mick!” Heatwave’s gun had shattered in his hand, shredding his right arm, and pieces of the gun were embedded in his torso. Michael scrambled to feel for a pulse. There was nothing.

Michael inhaled a shuddering breath, trying to calm himself down. He took Mick’s head in shaking hands and used his thumbs to close his eyes. “Thank you Mick,” he whispered. “Thank you for getting me out of trouble one more time.”

Lincoln stumbled to a stop beside his brother and dropped to his knees to grab him into a hug.

A short ways away, Vibe was sobbing and clutching at Killer Cold’s frozen arm. “No no no, you have to get up. You have to fix it. Cold!”

Barry sped Caitlin to Vibe’s side. She knelt beside her friend’s distraught doppelganger and looked Killer Cold over. He was still breathing, but she didn’t need to be a doctor to realize that he wouldn’t for long. There was a blackened hole torn through his side. The fire had cauterized it, so there was very little blood. But the blast had torn away part of his torso. A few of his ribs were exposed. Even now, the ice from Cold’s right arm was spreading down in an attempt to stabilize the massive wound. It wouldn’t work.

Caitlin rubbed Vibe’s back in an attempt to calm him down. Then she looked at Barry and shook her head.

Barry knelt on Killer Cold’s opposite side. “Hey Leonard,” he said softly.

Cold slowly turned his head to look at Barry. It took him a few seconds to focus on him. “Hey Scarlet.”

“You, uh, you really went all out this time, didn’t you?” Barry tried to chuckle at the mess around him. It didn’t work.

“I just wanted to keep you safe,” Cold said weakly.

“I know. I know you did.” Barry set his hand on Cold’s forearm, at a loss for words.

Cold knew, though. He raised his hand up and cupped Barry’s cheek. Somehow, it was still warm against Barry’s skin. “There was never any version of me that was not in love with every version of you.”

Barry sobbed. “I miss you, Leonard.”

The ice crept across his body, up his neck and face, until it finally stopped at his left shoulder. His hand dropped.

Leonard Snart was dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. I have never actually written an action climax for a story of this size. It was intense. There were just so many characters. Writing is really hard. But the last chapter and epilogue are all but done and will be posted at the same time this week.
> 
> Also, is it super obvious that I absolutely love Mick?


	13. Going Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For reference:  
1 – Team Flash & Legends, Mick-1 & Palmer  
2 – Mayor Snart, clearly the most crooked here  
4 – Cold-4, retired  
11 – Killer Cold & Heatwave, bad guys  
16 – Cold-16 & Sara-16, thieves  
19 – Leonard-19 & Mick-19, smugglers  
22 – Snart-22 & Rory-22, cyborg survivors  
27 – Len-27 & Mickey-27, freedom fighters  
29 – Michael-29, Lincoln, Veronica, & LJ, criminals but the good guys?  
30 – Scofield-30, structural engineer  
53 – Leo & Ray, 4-ever

Leo and Joe arrived too late. Leonard-19 was pretty banged up but alive. Cold-16 was pissed he missed the fight. Mayor Snart was not.

But it was when Ray returned with Rory-22 that had people rushing to comfort him.

“Mick, I am so sorry.”

Rory just snorted at them. Then he rubbed his hands together and formed a magical heat between them. “You squishies and your thermal sensitivities. Don’ know how you survive anything.”

Then he held his hands against the block of ice that held his partner. It steamed and quickly melted into a puddle. Snart-22 regained his footing and just looked evenly at everyone. 

“You all didn’t think something like the cold would kill me, did you? No don’t –.”

Barry hugged him.

Michael and Lincoln stood shoulder to shoulder, happy to be alive.

~

The next morning, Cold-16 cracked his eyes open when he heard quiet arguing just outside the med bay. Well, relatively quiet, considering that one of the people was Mick.

“No.”

“Come on, Mick, this’ll be good for both of you.” That was Palmer for sure.

“You’ve been talking to Leo again,” Mick argued. “That’s good for none of me.”

“Just, just go.” Palmer tried to shove Mick-1 towards the doorway. Mick shoved back. Palmer slapped Mick’s chest in retaliation. Mick slapped back. A lot harder.

“Owwww, Mick.”

“You idiots know I can see you, right?” Cold-16 said. “Because you are only 10.3 feet away from me.”

“Really? Looks more like 8.8 to me,” Palmer said.

“I’m counting from my center of mass, Raymond, you pedantic nerd, not the end of the bed.”

“Oh, then yeah, 10.3.”

“Glad we agree for a change. Did you two want something?”

Palmer gave Mick a pointed look, and Mick finally slunk into the room. He took a seat next to Cold and glowered at Palmer until he left.

“So, uh, Haircut seems to think we should have a heart-to-heart,” Mick muttered.

“We don’t have hearts,” Cold immediately replied. It was an easy, familiar response, and it contrarily made him feel calmer to have Mick’s doppelganger so close to him.

“Yeah, that line don’t really work with Ray. Punching don’t really work with Ray.”

“If you’ve got something to say, Mick, then say it.”

“Just that your me… sounds like he died killin’ the Time Bastards.”

Cold nodded.

“Then it was probably for the best,” Mick said. “’Cause things weren’t ever going back to the way they were before. With us. Too much happened.”

“You mean how I pressed you into a mission that wasn’t ours, how we betrayed each other over and over, and you got tortured and brain washed into being the Time Masters’ puppet until only your hate for me could snap you out of it? That was the ‘too much’ that happened to you? Because that’s what happened over on Earth-16.”

“Yeah, ‘bout the same.”

“I know Mick. We weren’t coming back from that.”

“What I’m supposed to tell you is that… I always thought we’d go down in a blaze of fire or a rain of bullets. But then you died – died to save me – and I got a better life than I ever deserved out of it. So if your Mick died to save you, then maybe you could pull your head out of your ass and get that better life too.”

Cold barked a surprised laugh. “That’s what you came in here to say?”

Mick counted off with his fingers. “You died a hero… made me a better person… head out of your ass. Yeah, that’s it. Ray made me practice.”

“Ray again,” Cold-16 drawled. “Seems like you’ve got a new partner after all.”

“Only ever had one partner. But I got an alright crew.”

Cold quirked up a mocking smile. A little one. “Maybe I’ll have to give them another shot.”

“They got a lot better once Sara became captain.”

“Oh thank god. I hated Rip.”

“And on that ringing endorsement, gentlemen,” a new voice said, “it is time to get off your very fine posteriors! We got work to do.”

Both men turned to see not just Palmer but Sara Lance, the Black Raven, and Sara Lance, the White Canary in the doorway.

“We ready to go, Boss?” Mick asked and stood.

“No more vacations for you two,” Sara-1 agreed. “We’ve got a bunch of magic rocks, so we gotta kill a time demon.”

“Never mind,” Cold-16 said. “I’m never leaving Central again.”

~

Michael stood in the cortex, looking at the displays Dr. Snow had up on the computers on the walls. His knowledge of genome comparisons was only rudimentary, but the gist of what she was saying was obvious.

“They don’t match.”

“No,” Dr. Snow agreed.

“Not even 25 percent.” A 25 percent match would still make sense, was still possible given all of Michael’s suspicions.

“No.”

“I understand. Could you not bring this up with Lincoln?”

Dr. Snow chewed on her lower lip. “Honestly, I was debating whether to bring it up with either one of you. After all, proving fraternity isn’t why I took these samples, and it’s really not any of my business. But if you know, then it becomes less my staying out of it and more actively keeping a secret from Lincoln.”

“Which you’re not willing to do.”

“I’m sorry, Michael.”

“So if I don’t tell him, you will.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I understand. Will you leave all this up? I’ll do it now.”

“Of course.” She squeezed Michael’s shoulder briefly. “Good luck.”

She left, and Michael went to find Lincoln. Better to get this over with. He brought him back to the cortex and closed the door for a bit of privacy.

“What’d you want to show me? We’re missing breakfast, and you know the Micks will eat all the donuts if we don’t get there soon.”

“I wanted to show you something that Dr. Snow found. You know she took DNA samples from everyone.”

“Yeah. She wanted to see if we were genetically identical to our doppelgangers. So what?”

“So… we are. Except for evidence of degradation due to age and variation typical among different worlds, we’re all identical.”

“I guess that’s nice. What’s the point?”

“But, Lincoln, the other doppelgangers out there – Leonard and Mick – they’re not brothers. And genetically, biologically, we’re not either.”

Lincoln slowly sat down and stared at Michael, brow furrowed. “We’re not brothers.”

“Of course we are, Linc. Just, one of us is adopted.”

“Me, you mean. I remember Mom being pregnant with you, so I’m adopted. I guess… that makes sense. Mom was always kind of distant with me. We never clicked like you and she did. I thought we just didn’t have a lot in common. I guess I was right.”

“Lincoln, that’s not true.”

“And you knew this already, didn’t you? You’ve known for a while.”

Michael hesitated, which was the same as answering. “I… suspected. We just have some traits that… don’t match up.”

“Like our eyes.”

“What?”

“One of the other Snarts said, ‘With those eyes?’ Honestly, I wasn’t positive he wasn’t hitting on me. But, within a few minutes of meeting him, he knew we weren’t related.”

“Lincoln, this doesn’t have to mean anything.” Michael knelt down in front of Lincoln. “You are my brother. I love you. You are the only family that matters to me. I didn’t want you to ever think otherwise.”

“Michael… you are some kind of moron, you know that? Come here.” 

Lincoln led Michael downstairs to what had been converted to the mess hall. They looked over the room from the vantage point of the stairs. Three pairs of Snarts and Rorys were there. Cold-16 and Mick-1 were huddled together, plotting what appeared to be a heist. Snart-22 threw a piece of bagel at his partner when Rory stole his donut. Len and Mickey-27 were getting into an argument that looked like it might turn violent soon.

“Look at them, Michael. None of them ever thought they were brothers, but they are. We are. It’s been the two of them – the two of us – across the _multiverse_. Which is crazy, by the way. All of this is crazy. Just so long as that’s said. But my point is, little brother, that the good doctor’s tests don’t change anything. Okay?”

Michael nodded and chose not to say anything. If he did, he was afraid it would end up horribly sentimental. But he did lean over to drop his forehead against Lincoln’s shoulder, more relieved than he could express.

The arguing Mickey finally took a swing at Len, who ducked under it to knee Mickey in the ribs. The two started tussling in earnest, and the other pairs yelled both encouragements and complaints.

“You think we should break that up?” Michael asked.

“I’m not getting in there,” Lincoln said. “Those guys are armed.”

“At least our arguments never involved fire or bullets.”

“See, we’re really not that bad.”

Then a napkin dispenser caught on fire. No one was sure which Rory was responsible.

~

Barry was tired but not like he had been for the last several days. It was that bone-deep weariness that came after a big fight and a full ten hours of sleep that told him everyone was alive and safe, and it was time to relax his muscles and his mind. It felt like he could happily just eat, sleep, and watch TV for three straight days.

But he still had work, and he wanted to check in on Cisco – the crazy one from Earth-11 – before going in.

Barry walked into the pipeline just in time to hear a shout. He found Caitlin locked in the pipeline cell with Cisco-11.

“I can’t see!” Cisco shouted. He threw a hairbrush at Caitlin, and she had to duck out of its way. “You can’t keep me in here, I can’t see!”

Barry ran over to the controls and opened the door. Caitlin rushed out, crying, and Barry ran in to keep Cisco from escaping. Cisco struggled and shouted “You’re not Barry” over and over. 

Not wanting to hurt him, Barry released Cisco, who fled to the corner of his cell and curled up into a whimpering ball on the floor.

“I can’t see I can’t see I can’t see,” Cisco muttered.

At a loss, Barry backed out of the cell and closed the door behind him. He went over to Caitlin, who was sobbing quietly against the wall. Caitlin almost never cried, and the sight upset Barry more than he wanted to admit.

“Caitlin, what happened?” Barry asked.

“I was stupid,” she said. She rubbed at her eyes. “I came in to give him breakfast. He seemed fine, so I decided to help him clean up and brush his hair and he seemed completely fine with it. He just sat and ate and was fine but then he started shouting, and I don’t know what set him off.”

Caitlin wasn’t much of a crier or a hugger, but these were some pretty extreme circumstances. He gave her a light hug around her shoulders and let her finish her tears.

“I know. I know it’s hard to see him like this. We’ll figure it out. We always do.”

~

Everyone filtered into the commissary for breakfast shortly after. The mood was considerably more amicable and upbeat than it had been just yesterday. Michael realized that this was the first time that everyone had been in a room together. There were three Micks, seven Leonards, two different Rays, Barry, Iris, Cisco, Caitlin, two Saras, Lincoln, Veronica, LJ, and Michael himself. Even Michael’s doppelganger from Earth-30 was there, talking quietly with Mickey-27.

It was loud enough and busy enough that Veronica had to lean over their table to them to say, “Linc, should we be worried that Cold-4 is over there teaching your son how to get out of handcuffs.”

“What?” Lincoln leaned to the side to see them. “Huh. I don’t know whether to break that up or join in the lesson.”

“Could be a useful skill,” Michael agreed.

Then Sara walked into the room. Not Sara Lance. It was Sara Tancredi. Michael felt his heart rate pick up, and he couldn’t help but stare. Her red hair was graying, and the lines around her mouth had deepened, but she still held herself up tall as she surveyed the room.

She was absolutely breathtaking.

She smiled when her husband – Cold-4 – stood to hug her, and she kissed him easy as anything. 

The Flash from Earth-4 shuffled in behind her, looking apologetic at Cold-4.

“Sorry, Leonard,” he said. “She insisted.”

“Mikey, what’re you staring at?” Lincoln asked. Then he turned. “Holy hell, is that Dr. Tancredi?”

“Yeah.”

“Michael, go talk to her.”

“I don’t think so.”

Lincoln elbowed Michael in the ribs, Michael shoved his hands off, Lincoln shoved back, and somehow Michael ended up across the room, standing next to the sixty year old doppelganger of the woman he fell in love with just a few months ago.

“Well, hello handsome,” she said to him. “You look rather like the man I married. I wonder whatever happened to him?”

“He got old and bitter,” Cold-4 answered. “Don’t worry; I’m sure being married to you had nothing to do with that.”

Sara smacked her husband upside the head. Their easy teasing and happy smiles were completely foreign to Michael. The Sara he was used to carried a constant worry and sadness with her. It was probably for the best that he remind himself that this wasn’t his Sara and this wasn’t a future for him.

“Hello Sara. I’m Michael.” He held up his hand to shake hers.

She smacked his hand away, said, “Don’t be silly,” and wrapped him up in a hug. “It’s very good to meet you, Michael.”

Michael held her around the torso and silently told his Sara goodbye.

~

Barry got off work mid-afternoon and decided to check on Cisco-11 before his Cisco. He entered the pipeline entrance, expecting another outburst. Instead, he found Cisco-11 washing his hands in the sink over the toilet.

“Uh, hey Cisco.”

“Hey Barr.”

“You feeling better?”

“Better? Oh, did I freak out on you earlier?”

“Yeah. Pretty bad.”

“Yeah, I do that sometimes.”

“So, if I open this door, are you going to freak out again?”

Cisco shrugged and made a noise that roughly translated to ‘I don’t know’.

“Guess that’ll have to do.” Barry opened the door to Cisco’s cell and stepped in with him. After a bit of awkward shuffling, they both sat cross-legged on the floor.

“We need like a bench or something in these,” Cisco said.

“We really do,” Barry agreed.

“So, what’re you going to do with me?”

“We haven’t figured that out yet. It’s not like we can let you go. You could breach anywhere and start killing again.”

“To be fair, I never killed anyone. Cold did.”

“But you helped him. You encouraged him. I heard you, Cisco, telling him to kill Leonard. I’ve never heard you sound like that, Cisco. It scared me.”

Cisco shrugged again and refused to look at Barry. “Killer Cold’s dead. I think that’s enough for me.”

Barry buried his face in his hands. “What happened, Cisco?”

“You died.”

“Yeah, we figured that part out. The three of you were trying to kill Leonard Snart’s doppelgangers to protect all versions of me, which is insane and doesn’t make any sense, by the way, but we still don’t know why.”

Cisco looked at the floor. “It was his fault,” he said softly. He curled in on himself again, and his voice started to strain. “You died, and it was his fault. And my fault.”

“No, Cisco. I can’t claim to know what really happened to you, but I know you would do anything to help me.”

“I failed you, Barry. You died.”

“No, Cisco, please, it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t fail me.”

“Yes, he did.” 

Both Cisco and Barry looked up to find that they had gained an audience. Michael Scofield from Earth-30, the one that had barely said a word throughout this whole mess, came up and knelt beside the distraught Cisco. 

“You did fail him. But killing these people won’t make up for it. Nothing you do can ever make up for it.”

Confused, Barry let Cisco lean towards Scofield.

“Then what do I do?”

Scofield shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know at all. But… if you’ll let me, I’ll help you find out.” He looked at Barry this time. “He can come with me. I’ll take care of him.”

~

Cisco of Earth-1 had spent most of the day in the speed lab avoiding his doppelganger and breaching people home. Thankfully, Flash-4 had come to get his supervillain and saved Cisco that extra headache.

“Alright gentleman and Rory, here’s your stop. Earth-22.” Cisco’s breach stabilized. “Please keep your arms to your sides as you disembark.”

“Thanks for the loot, geeks,” Rory said as he slung a backpack onto his shoulder. It was weighed heavily down. He hopped through the portal without a backwards glance.

“That backpack was full of Hostess treats, right?”

Snart-22 stepped up beside Cisco. “There were definitely baked goods in there, yes.”

“That was ominously open-ended.” 

Snart smiled fondly, and Cisco realized that it was the first time he had seen anything other than a neutral scowl on his face.

“I don’t suppose I could get the specs to that cold gun?” Snart-22 asked. “I might get it worked into my arm.”

“One, no. Two, I designed that gun, and no one else can handle its intricacies, okay? Okay.”

Snart gave Cisco a meaningful smirk. “Well, then it’s a good thing I only trust my bio-mechanical engineering to the very best. I’m sure my guy could handle it.”

That sounded an awful lot like Cisco’s doppelganger was Snart’s engineer. Cisco gave his best attempt at a smirk back. It came across as mostly sweetly proud. “You think your guy could handle my tech?”

“I know he could.”

“He’s that smart?”

“He’s brilliant. Creative. Good looker, too. Great hair.”

“Well,” Cisco practically preened. “I might consider sending the plans over. Don’t suppose he’s anyone I’d know.”

“You might have heard of him.” Snart picked up his own bag and sauntered towards the portal. “Hartley Rathaway.”

“Oh you son of a - !”

~

Michael and Lincoln sat on the ledge in the speed lab. They said goodbye to Mayor Snart as he left for Earth-2 and watched Scofield-30 leave with Cisco-11. (There was no way that would turn out well.)

Barry and Sara-16 entered, hovering over Cold-16 as he entered the speed lab. Once Cisco opened the portal to Earth-16, everyone was surprised when someone immediately stepped through it to their side.

It was the Flash.

“Oh, uh, hi. Flash,” Barry stumbled.

“Flash,” Flash-16 said back, smirking in amusement. He didn’t look quite the same. He was more muscular than Barry and a little shorter. But he looked at Cold-16. “Snart.”

“Hey, kid. Come all this way just for me?”

“I did. Are we going to have to fight before I take you to Iron Heights?”

Cold-16 hissed in through his teeth as if thinking over the question. Then he nodded towards the sling. “Four cracked ribs and a broken clavicle. Not today, I think.”

Flash-16 cringed in sympathy. To Sara-16, he said, “Go ahead. The team’s waiting for you guys.”

Sara helped Cold-16 through the breach. 

Barry smiled at Flash-16 and held out his hand. “Barry Allen.”

Flash-16 smiled and shook it. “Barry Allen.”

“Oh yeah? You look like my dad.”

“Really?”

“Well, like he did thirty or forty years ago.”

“That makes more sense.”

“So, you’re taking Cold to jail?”

“Yes. He has a lot of outstanding warrants. I don’t know what happened here, but it doesn’t change that.”

Barry nodded. “I understand. The Leonard from this Earth… there was a lot of bad in him. But there was a lot of good too. In the end, the good won out. It did for a lot of them here.”

Flash-16 looked down at his feet. “I thought that too, once, about Snart. I was thrilled when he went with the Legends a few years back. I thought maybe he was starting to believe in the good in him too. But when he came back…” Flash-16 shook his head. “He lashed out at a lot of people. He was worse than I’d ever seen him. Worse than he was before he was Captain Cold.”

Barry fidgeted a bit. “Maybe you could give him one more chance. He worked through some things here. I think he might surprise you after all.”

“I hope so. But it’ll have to wait. He’s got a lot of time to serve at Iron Heights.”

“Meaning he’ll be out as soon as his clavicle heals.”

“Obviously.”

The two laughed at their own joke.

“Hey chuckleheads,” Cisco interrupted, “this breach isn’t keeping itself open, you know.”

“Sorry, Vibe,” Flash-16 said. Then he saluted at Barry. “Flash.”

Barry waved. “Flash.”

The Flash left, and Cisco closed the breach. Then Cisco cracked his knuckles. “Alright. Who’s next?”

“I guess that’s us,” Lincoln stepped up. Cautiously, he asked, “Where to then? Are you dropping us off at Fox River?”

Barry and Cisco smiled at each other.

“Actually,” Cisco said, “we’ve got something to show you.”

Confused, Lincoln and Michael followed them back to the cortex. Veronica and LJ were already there, talking to Caitlin Snow and Iris West, and they smiled at them as soon as they walked in. Veronica came over and hugged Lincoln.

“Hi, V. What’s… what’s goin’ on?”

“We’re going to be free, Lincoln.” She pulled back to smile at him again.

“What do you mean?”

Barry was the one that answered. “I overheard you say that you’ve got a setup in Panama? So that’s where we’re going to drop you off.”

Michael’s heart stuttered. That was it? They were going to let them go? No prison. No death row. No escape with too many sacrifices and too many compromises. Just Panama with a dive shop and 50 cent beers. Could it really be that easy?

It was Lincoln that voiced Michael’s thoughts. “What? Panama? You’re just going to open that breach to Panama, and we can just leave?”

“Of course not,” Iris said, and Michael froze. “We aren’t just going to leave you like that. Here.” She handed Michael a silver device that glowed blue. “This will open a small breach to here if you ever need us. It also acts as a communicator.” Then she held up a thumb drive. “Our friend Felicity wrote this computer virus for you. We’ve used it before. It erases a person’s digital history. Birth records, video footage, criminal history… Plug this into any computer with internet access, and the four of you will effectively cease to exist.”

Michael had to sit down. He rubbed a hand over his face.

Then Veronica said, “There is a catch, Lincoln. This will destroy any digital evidence that we could use to exonerate you. If we use this, we won’t ever be able to prove you’re innocent or that it was Terrence Steadman and the Vice President that did this to you.”

“But no one will be able to prove he was guilty,” Michael said. “All that will be left will be hard copies, which you said were destroyed, and people’s memories, which will fade as soon as we’re not breaking news anymore. We’ll be free.”

“So, the question is, do we want to go after answers and some justice of our own,” LJ said, “or do we want to be free.”

Lincoln stepped forward and took the thumb drive. “No question on my part. I want my family safe.” He hugged his son and ruffled his hair. “Panama. Beaches and surfboards and local girls. Think you can handle that?”

“And school,” Veronica added. “You’re going back to school.”

LJ nodded into his dad’s chest. “I can handle that. School and all.”

Michael stood and approached Barry. “Why would you do this for us?”

Barry’s smile turned a little sad. “My dad served 15 years in Iron Heights for a crime he didn’t commit. I’m not going to let that happen to anyone else.”

For once, Michael acted impulsively and enveloped Barry in a hug. 

“Oh, we’re hugging,” Barry startled, but he quickly wrapped his arms around Michael and happily returned the hug.

“Why does Barry always get the credit?” Cisco complained. “I did most of the work, and I am so huggable. Speaking of, there’s one more thing.”

Everyone broke apart to give their attention to Cisco.

“What is it?” Michael asked.

“New identities. I’m making you passports. You’re all from L.A. now, by the way. I just need your new names.”

Michael thought. He thought of Killer Cold and Heatwave looking out for each other when they were at their absolute worst. He thought of Cold and Sara desperately trying to grieve Mick. He thought of Len and Mickey settling their fight with their fists and Mayor Snart begging forgiveness from his sister. He thought of Mick becoming a hero with the Legends and Leo getting a happy ending with Ray. He thought of Captain Cold keeping an eye on his retired Rogues and their families while Sara – older and still so beautiful – kept an eye on him. He thought of Snart and Rory watching each others’ backs and Leonard and Mick smuggling refugee metas to safety. 

He thought of his own family, safe and free at last.

“Leonard Snart.”


	14. Epilogue

2 – Mayor Leonard Snart goes back to work, protecting the city he loves. And then something a little like this happens: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12868041. 

4 – Captain Cold, retired, sees his youngest off to college. A few years later, world-wide meta-trafficking upsets the criminal world. Cold comes out of retirement, along with several of his old Rogues, to protect their meta kids and friends. Not a single meta kid goes missing from the streets of Central City.

16 – Captain Cold does, eventually, get his head out of his ass. He and Black Raven do what he meant to do years ago and form a better class of Rogue. The Flash never stood a chance.

19 – Captain Cold, Heatwave, and Golden Glider are never apprehended. However, their informants – the Flash, an enforcer named Frost, and a mid-level pencil pusher named Francisco Ramon – are eventually found out. The six of them flee south and live quite happily in a small country that on Earth-1 is called Panama.

22 – Leonard Snart and Mick Rory do what they have always done – survive. Sometimes, they meet up with five others so that Mick can do his whole hero thing (worst orgy ever), but otherwise just have a blast wherever they find themselves. At one point, they meet a masked vigilante named Commander Cold breaking prisoners out of Krung the Face Crusher’s slave pens. He looks an awful lot like Barry Allen.

27 – Len and Mickey patch things up and continue the good fight against the evil Crime Syndicate.

30 – Michael Scofield and Cisco Ramon do a lot of therapy until one day they decide to confront The Company. That story has yet to be told.

53 – Leo and Ray do battle with politics and diplomacy, though they sometimes miss the simplicity of guns and superpowers.

~

**Earth-29**

Sara Tancredi remains employed at Fox River. She and her father stay off The Company’s radar.

Fernando Sucre finishes his time at Fox River. He may or may not work things out with Maricruz, but he at least gets to be in his daughter’s life.

Benjamin Franklin completes his sentence at Fox River. He eventually has a massive fight with his wife, but his daughter never has to see either of her parents arrested.

Charles Westmoreland does not get to see his daughter before she dies, but he lives to attend her funeral.

During the investigation into the break out, Brad Bellick’s corruption is uncovered, and he is fired. Henry Pope resigns, but the lack of violence in the break out means he doesn’t hold a grudge towards Michael.

David Apolskis is never transferred to Avocado’s cell.

Charles Patoshik, Theodore Bagwell, and John Abruzzi remain incarcerated at Fox River. The world is (mostly) safer for it.

The manhunt for Michael and Lincoln is short-lived due to the complete lack of clues or sightings. Alexander Mahone is never called into the case. He remains under The Company’s thumb, but he doesn’t get in nearly as deep. His son is never tortured to death.

Aldo Burrows does what he can to damage The Company. Christina Rose Scofield executes her coup against General Krantz. Both are considerably more successful without their children complicating things. Whether The Company ends up better or worse is up to interpretation, but Christina at least stops any attempts to hunt down her son. Michael and Lincoln never learn any of this.

Fox River State Penitentiary becomes known as the fourth most cursed prison in Illinois. 

Leonard Michael Snart, Mitchell Lincoln Rory, Lincoln Joseph Rory, and Victoria Davis will return in “Coldflash in Panama”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I have never attempted a story like this, and I am deeply grateful for those of you that stuck with me through the whole thing.
> 
> I struggled a lot with what this story was about. Not the plot – that was pretty straight-forward. Killer Cold wanted to kill himself, so Team Flash had to get the doppelgangers together to snark at each other. Makes sense. But rather, what was the overall point? Was it just about Michael witnessing these different possibilities for himself? Was it a character study into Leonard Snart? If so, did I want to bring Earth-1 Snart back in the myriad of ways possible? Did I want to set this in my No Strings universe? Was it ColdFlash? Angst? Humor? Or did I just want to stop the drama of Prison Break by throwing super heroes at it? (That one. Really, it was that one.)
> 
> In the end, I decided that this story was about Leonard’s relationship with Mick and, by extension, Michael’s with Lincoln. I tried to make that a focus even among those that didn’t have the other half of the relationship present. Probably especially with those.
> 
> That’s why Veronica, LJ, and even Team Flash had to take a bit of a back seat. That, and my cast was just ridiculously large. Like, seriously. Huge.
> 
> I will post some plot-bunnies for this story that I eventually decided against using. Then there will be a short transition story dealing with Michael's brain tumor before I get into the proper sequel. I also might write a short story explaining what happened on Earth-11 between Rogue Air and the beginning of this story from Lisa's POV.
> 
> The sequel - Coldflash in Panama - will be very different from this. It's largely romantic fluff and has no major plot. I've never written a romance-driven story before, but I am looking forward to something in which everyone is happy and nobody dies. After watching Prison Break, that's all I really want.
> 
> Thank you again.


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